


Repainted Imperfections

by hhoneycas



Category: Supernatural
Genre: (I'm so sorry), (is it tho?), Alternate Universe - High School, Artist Castiel (Supernatural), Asexual Castiel (Supernatural), Bisexual Dean Winchester, Castiel (Supernatural)-centric, Extended Metaphors, Friends to Lovers, Homophobic Language, M/M, Metaphors, Non-Consensual Kissing, Rape/Non-con Elements, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-06-30 00:46:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 27,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19842022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hhoneycas/pseuds/hhoneycas
Summary: Cas had never really expected his life to change, it had always been a series of miseries and accidental brushstrokes on an already messy canvas and he’d made peace with it long ago, but all it takes is a lonesome Monday lunch period and a boy with that perfect shade of green in his eyes to make Castiel decide he doesn’t want that anymore. The only question is, will this masterpiece of a boy accept Castiel for the ruined portrait he is?Or: Art student Cas falls for out and proud Dean Winchester but there's a few more personal hurdles he has to jump and ties he has to cut before he can go for what he wants.





	Repainted Imperfections

**Author's Note:**

> "Thank you"s go to:
> 
> [Sam!](wanderingcas.tumblr.com) Who was the first one to read this, in it's first 1k form, and her approval made me start in this endeavor. She was also kind enough to offer beta services so big thanks there.
> 
> [Makenna!](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepopeisdope) Who was the one I turned to constantly with the "is this still good?" and they really had my back. Her words of constant support meant the world to me and it was what kept me writing this when I didn't think it'd pass 10k, so seriously, thanks.
> 
> [Sunny!](blueeyesandpie.tumblr.com) Who created the STUNNING art for this fic (which can be found here). For real, go check it out. It's amazing and it really brings the whole thing together.
> 
> I hope y'all like this, it was a labor of love, truly, and I'm excited it's finally here.

MONDAY

Charcoal was one of the most annoying mediums Cas had ever worked with. The erasers were complicated, if you got something wrong it scattered everywhere and, mostly, it was dirty. Residue dug into his skin and under his nails and if it didn't give him the gritty finish he wanted, Cas would never use the dark and dirty pencil.

Of course, here he was, using it, going the difficult route for the sake of the final product. He pushed his tissue across a shadow and reminded himself that it would look beautiful when he was done. Beautiful to everyone else, but that was the same thing, right?

Meg stopped his negative thoughts with a sharp pencil tap to his shoulder. "Are you eating by your locker again?"

"Yes? Why wouldn't I?" Cas didn't even put down his pencil. Meg knew him well enough that a lack of eye contact wouldn't bother her, so he didn't see the point.

In his peripherals, he could see her folding her arms, her painting beside her forgotten. "Well, let's see, you could do something new in your senior year of high school?"

Cas would have laughed at her if he wasn't busy adjusting the paper under his hand. "Since when have I been one to stray from plans?" He could feel her sigh on the back of his neck and even down to the hand with the pencil in it. That was what it took to get him to turn around. "If you're going to express such breathy disappointment, could you do it away from my grade?"

She directed the next sigh towards her paint palette, the heavy air causing little ripples to appear in the pigments. "I'm just saying that if every other part of you stays ‘normal'," Cas didn't miss the gesture to his clothes, "then why can't you do something exciting?" She held her wet and barely tinted brush above the cotton rag and let it drip blue around the ivy she'd drawn earlier.

Her art was impressive, with realistic nature features Cas could never hope to achieve and would never dare to try. He'd stick, safe and sound, to the darkened limbs and extremities he felt comfortable with.

"I don't want to run the risk of something happening." Even as he sat there, protecting his art with his forearm and the thoughts in his brain with silence, Cas wanted something to happen. He wanted to be interesting and change something about the way he went about his days.

His life was somewhat exciting, but only he really knew it. Besides, that "excitement" wasn't exactly something he wished to share with the world or something he himself wanted to keep up.

He pushed the thought—and its consequences—out of his head and began redrawing the defining lines in the smoke. Beside him, he could hear Meg ready up to comment only to be interrupted by the timer on his phone. There were five minutes left in class and his hands were covered in charcoal. It marked up his fingers and shifted on his skin when he flexed his hands. "I have to clean up."

Cas collected his pencils and walked away, gaining a spare moment to think about his answer to whatever Meg would ask. He let the water run over the charcoal marks on his wrists and watched as they streaked down his fingers.

Soon, thinking about answers led to just thinking. Meg was right. He wanted to change, but he wasn't ready yet. For three years he'd been painting the blackened walls of his mind with a sheer white coat and he wasn't done yet. Not stain-free and pristine yet and Cas had already made far too many mistakes to show spots of darkened imperfections to the world.

Meg pulled him out of his thoughts when her warm-toned paints mixed into his black charcoal at the base of the sink. "I know ‘exciting' is a low bar for you," to which Cas nodded, "so maybe just change something? High school's almost over, make it fun." She let her elbow bump up against his and Cas in turn, let himself smile. Her fingers touched the bottom and drew crude streaks in the now darkened paint. A little of it remained on her fingers and Cas only watched as she drew them across his forearm. "Put a little color in your life." She walked away with her clean palette, leaving Cas to scrub the remaining stains off his hands, removing all traces of the class he actually enjoyed.

For a moment, it all seemed doable. He wasn't by any means ready to start carving a new life out of marble, but maybe he could add a little clay to what already existed. He could do it one little change at a time.

The bell rang after fourth period and Cas wove his way through the sea of people in the hallway where his locker was. Like every day, it was mostly empty and, like every day, Cas knew it wasn't going to last. People would congregate, shouting and laughing and Cas would stay because he had nowhere else to go. Are you eating by your locker again? He closed his own locker with careful movements, his history textbook exchanged for a tiny reusable grocery bag and his sketchbook. He settled in front of the bottom locker and waited for Meg. People soon filled the wide hallway, circling next to a locker for the best access to their friends. Cas found it better to keep his friends in his peripherals, seeing as neither he nor Meg wanted to detach their backs from the lockers and give up the minimal comfort they provided.

Speaking of Meg, she was late. Her fourth period was on the third floor and she was not next to Cas yet. Then, as if she knew, her low-heeled boots appeared in the corner of Cas' eye.

"Please sit down, I don't like braving the hallways by myself." He gestured with his free hand to the floor space beside him. When her backpack didn't land by his feet, he looked up. "Why aren't you sitting?"

"I will not be joining you for lunch today, angel." She said it with a smile and Cas narrowed his eyes at her. "I won't be tying you down any longer," she said, arms stretched wide as if the sun shone above her instead of through the dusty shades of the windows.

Cas shook his head at her surreal statement, staring up at her as if she were the subject of a painting similar in style. "It's far more likely the opposite. Sit down, please." When she shook her head it seemed a little less like a joke. He could only hope she was kidding. She was the first friend to protect the absurd patterns he painted with his life. She made sure no one ripped him apart or washed away the things he worked for. She didn't leave him sun-bleached and less than like people had before, but instead, she cared and let him take his time to dry to perfection as he needed. He _needed_ her. "Meg, what the hell?"

She put a hand on his head and forced him to look up at her instead of the lockers across from them. "Calm down, I'm going to take a history test. I came to grab my book and let you know that I cannot sit here but _only for today_." She pointed an unimpressed stare his way. She opened and closed her locker and looked down again. "Keep the paranoia to a minimum while I'm gone, Cas."

She was back down the adjacent hallway before Cas could give her a weak smile. And when he refocused, it hit him. The noise of the hallways was thoroughly overwhelming. It wasn't separate conversations, painted neatly and divided with masking tape that peeled away to reveal clean barriers, it was more like an awful mix of colors that darkened clean water almost to brown. It was this water, coated in the chaos of overlapping speech, that drowned Castiel as he sat alone in the hallway. The person he could count on to carry him to where it was clear and laid out on canvas was taking a history test.

Cas curled his legs towards his body and looked down at the apple core before him. His sketchbook lay open next to it, half-drawn lines and eraser shavings the only evidence of progress. He wasn't going to get much done and he knew it. He never really got much done, but they'd always sat here and Cas had never really considered moving.

It took Cas five minutes of trying to sit alone to decide he needed to move. Where though? His next class was physics, he'd just go there, he decided.

It was a simple trip, no embarrassing moments to stamp his face in the brains of his classmates, and not nearly enough people that he felt plastered in the stairwells. He made it to the labs on the second floor with nothing to worry about. The worry came when he caught a glance inside the classroom.

Noise and people populated the room, pushed together at the front like stippling dots. It stressed him out in a way not dissimilar to the tedious process of gently placing each dot except in this scenario, he had no control. Normally width and density were under his discretion but here, Castiel had nothing. The possibility of a club in this room hadn't even crossed his mind, too used to his routine to consider anything else. Now he was at a standstill.

He ducked into the classroom once more and a modicum of relief presented itself. His seat, tucked into the back of the room, was empty.

Silent as he could, Cas stepped past the crowding students, slipping around the edges of the frame. Finally, he sat down and pulled out his sketchbook. The remnants of the apple core sketch seemed to taunt him from where it sat on the paper. He didn't even have the fruit for reference anymore, but he still felt something compelling him to draw it. Images and additions flicked across his mind, passing and switching like film. Frame by frame, an image developed in his mind, details presenting themselves to Cas and the pencil in his hand.

Just as he moved his pencil. As he exacted his inspiration, someone spoke.

"Ladies and gents and folks!" a voice from somewhere in front of Cas shouted. It gained the attention of everyone in the room, including and unfortunately, Cas.

The voice belonged to a senior standing at the front of the room. Cas recognized him from a couple of his classes, but no matter how much he reshuffled things in his brain, he couldn't remember his name.

"Let's get started!" the boy said, enthusiasm coating every word he spoke. His eyes glittered with it. From the back of the room, Cas could see that they were green, but the true depth of the color was lost on him. Before he could get a better look, the boy leaned down to the desktop in front of him and clicked open a PowerPoint. Digital paint splatters of every color decorated the screen and Cas was so taken by the sudden appearance of color that he barely noticed the words at first. Or rather, the letters, three of them.

GSA. Surely this wasn't what Meg had meant about bringing color into his life, but it was odd that he found himself here of all places.

At the front of the room, the senior kept his presentation - something about bisexuals in pop culture - brief before letting everyone return to mingling. It was an opportunity for Cas to return to his sketch, to slip once more into his routine and never leave, but he didn't. He remained still, gazing ahead like he was simply made of marble, taking in the boy in front of him like he was too.

Eventually, the unnamed boy stepped away from his presentation and moved to sit with his friends. He slipped into their conversation as if he'd never left, as if he had been in the scene, painted in with their joy all along. Cas couldn't tear his eyes away as he watched him laugh along with whatever someone had said.

He felt awe crystallize somewhere and before he could relish in it, it was cut through, violently crushed by jealousy. Jealousy that poked his heart and dripped through his eyes. Castiel didn't _belong_ here. This was a space for people with _pride_. A home for people who were part of a _community_. It wasn't a hiding place for broken people, a shadow to duck beneath. It wasn't fit for Castiel and Castiel wasn't fit for it.

Reaching somewhere beside him, Castiel picked up his pencil. It was a silent retreat into himself, a refusal to change and it hurt. When he began drawing again, the lines were harsh and thick and to Cas' eyes only, they seeped a sense of failure he never wanted to see again. Still, he kept sketching. The only way out of failure was a success and if he was going to succeed at anything, drawing an apple core would be it.

Just as the fruit took shape, the second it became recognizable as _something_ , the bell rang. He closed his notebook and pushed it to the side of his desk. He flexed his left hand, exercising out the discomfort and the anger.

By the time the second bell rang, Cas' mindset had switched and he had exchanged the sketchbook for the textbook, readying himself for a difficult forty-five minutes. Physics wasn't his strong suit, nothing math-related really was, but on the bright side, he could hide his wrong answers and Slader tab in the back of the room.

Five minutes later, Ms. Mills walked into the room, clipboard under one arm, coffee cup held tightly in the other hand.

"Folks, new unit. We're changing seats." She slid a chart under the projector and Cas couldn't help but seeth at it. So much for his sense of privacy.

He hated the front of the room. It felt like being shoved into focus, like every time he spoke or moved, all his actions were on camera. Every time he misspoke, someone caught his embarrassment on in a still frame, flash and all. Every time he opted for silence, he was cold-called into the spotlight.

Not to mention the fact that he was always miserable with whatever partner he was put with, too quiet to try for a friend, too off-putting to be granted one. He hated it.

Slowly gathering his books, Cas found his seat in the middle of the row. At least he had a good view.

Somewhere to his left, books landed on the table and a backpack slid into the space between their chairs. Cas didn't even glance at his new desk partner, not seeing the point in pulling out a new canvas if it was only going to remain unused.

"Okay, boys and girls, we're starting a lab tomorrow, but we need to review the info we went over last week before we can do that," she said, pulling out packets of paper from her desk drawer. Slowly, members of the class caught on. Some groaned out loud, others took it like champions and got diligently to work while most of them, Cas included, sighed down at their packets and counted the questions.

That was the only thing that ever changed about the chapter assessment packets, how many questions were in them. Otherwise, it was the same template they got every time. A space for the chapter and several large lines where they were supposed to write the questions found in the book. This time, there were thirty questions which meant one chapter. Now, if only he could remember what they'd done last week.

Seeing as asking, and putting himself on camera on day one of the hell seat, was a no-go, Cas pasted his eyes on the table of contents and scoured the chapter titles for something memorable. It sure wasn't the introduction chapter, and Cas was ninety percent certain that they had not reached a chapter titled, "Rotational Mechanics", yet, but that still left nine chapters.

"What am I looking for?" Cas murmured, most definitely to himself. Just his luck though, that the boy next him heard.

"You missing the chapter title?"

Peeling himself away from the book, Cas turned to him. The words he was going to say melted into something sour on his tongue. He'd really been screwed in terms of partners this time.

Of all the people to be paired next to, Cas was stuck next to the kid with everything. Pride, an extroverted personality and apparently, an aptitude for physics. Cas had none of those and no, he wasn't jealous. He was just...bitter.

He let that bitterness paint his next words. "No. I've got it fine."

The kid's eyes dropped back down to his own paper and if Cas had been anyone else, the desaturation in his eyes would have gone unnoticed. "Oh. I'm sorry. If you do need help, let me know, I'm happy to offer." He smiled softly before looking back at his book.

Cas stared even as the boy returned to his work. His genuine offer had him swallowing down a little bit of his hatred. "Thanks." When he looked back at the book though, he still had no idea which chapter it was. Trying to be sly, he glanced at the top corner of his partner's book. Chapter seven: Momentum. Alright, that was a start.

He copied the first question onto the packet and got to work. It went fairly smoothly, the first ten questions almost flying by and Cas might've gotten complacent because right around question eleven, he got stuck.

"What?" he whispered once again. And once again, his desk partner heard him.

There was a gentle pencil tap on his hand. "You need help?"

Cas was too scared to ask for it, but now that he wasn't angry, he wasn't too scared to accept it. "Yes, please," he said. He shifted the textbook towards the boy and pointed to the question.

He read the problem for a moment before dragging his own packet between them. "So, if you throw the ball while you're moving in the opposite direction, which direction does your hand go?"

Somehow the simple pencil gestures and crude little sketches made the simple question even simpler. "First, it goes the direction of the ball, then back the direction the rest of your body."

The boy's eyes brightened again and he nodded. "What's that called?"

Cas scanned his notebook next to him. "A recoil?" There was another bright nod and Cas could feel his whole heart swell with pride.

"Now, when your hand changes directions like that what is it changing?"

He moved his hand in front of him and made like he was actually in the scenario, jerking his hand back and forth in front of him. Slow as it goes forward, quickly when he "threw", and even quicker when it was pulled back to his body. "It's a change in momentum."

Yet another encouraging nod. "And that's called?"

"An impulse," he said, new confidence flooded into his voice.

The boy tapped the page firmly and then held his hand out as if to say, "There's your answer!" And when Cas looked back down at the page, the question was, "Do you feel an impulse?"

A sense of awe flooded through him. He did physics, something with no base in art at all, with relative ease. All thanks to this kid next to him.

"Thank you," he said with all the genuine sincerity he could push into his voice.

"Anytime."

They both returned to their work, Cas a little tempted to ask for help again the whole time, but he never did. He never needed to, actually. He worked himself through the problems the way he'd been showed and everything got a lot easier.

Faster than he expected, there were only five minutes left in class. Pulling out his folder, he slipped the packet in behind his charcoal drawing and was about to put it back in his bag when he heard the kid next to him talk, initiating conversation with Castiel for the second time that day.

"Holy shit, are you in AP Studio Art?"

Cas turned to look at him. "Yes," he said, ready to defend his class from an onslaught of judgment. Instead of that, he got green eyes looking down at the thick paper with nothing short of jealousy and appreciation.

"You should be, that looks awesome," he said, gesturing at the artwork.

A little stunned by the kindness, Cas stared for a second before he answered properly. "Thank you."

"No problem."

Cas finally tucked the thing back into his backpack and was moving to walk away when he was spoken to again. All of it combined was attention he wasn't used to.

"Wait, Cas, hey." It struck him that this person knew his name and Cas felt a little more guilt for not knowing his in return. Still, he turned back to his seat partner and gave an expectant look.

"Yes?"

"I saw you were at GSA today, are you gonna come back? We'd love to have you."

If Cas hadn't been looking right into his eyes, he'd have thought that it was a spiel given to everyone at every club, but it wasn't. The boy, who Cas didn't even _know_ , wanted him at his club.

"Sure," he said, a little quicker than he'd intended to. Not that he regretted it, it was simply that commitment wasn't something he was privy to. "I'd love to." Another phrase he wasn't expecting.

Naturally, the way the boy's eyes crinkled with pure elation made all the snap decisions a great deal more bearable. "Awesome."

Cas nodded to him, too distracted trying to figure out what the hell his name was to give a proper response. Apparently, he had been obvious.

"You struggling with something there, Cas?"

He deflated under the curious gaze. "I can't remember your name."

A tension that Cas hadn't noticed before seeped quickly from the air around them. "Oh, thank god. I thought you hated me. Can't have pity ‘yesses' in my club, you know?" he said with nothing but humor in his tone. It took Cas a minute, but he realized that he wasn't offended. He didn't care. "I'm Dean," he said, holding out a hand.

And as Cas took it, any ill regard he'd had for Dean faded into nothingness. "Nice to meet you, Dean."

The bell rang and they dropped each other's hands, Dean following Cas out the classroom. "I'll see you tomorrow," he called as they turned opposite directions in the hallway. Cas turned back, almost losing sight of Dean in the sudden flood of high schoolers. "We have English together!" And then he was gone, off to his next class and for once, Cas had something to look forward to.

Having calculus as his last period was not the way to end his days on a high note, but when the final bell rang, the relief of it being over gave him a little hope. He was home free.

The pile with the homework finally reached his desk and he slipped the half sheet with the assignment on it behind the rest of his papers and tried not to dread it too much. He had other things to focus on.

Moving his chair back toward his desk, creating the grating sound that currently filled the room, and would most likely haunt him until he died, Cas made to walk out the door. He couldn't go too fast, couldn't draw attention to himself, but if he dawdled, he'd be stuck.

Pushing past a couple of people, trying to get lost in the crowd, he made it to the threshold of the classroom. One foot to freedom and he could almost step into the muddled splotches of friend groups and sports teams congregating in the hallway. Then there was a hand on his shoulder.

He could feel himself being pulled back into the classroom and backed against a wall, too close for any semblance of camaraderie or any sliver of comfort. Cas just followed, robotic and resigned. Everyone else filed out, unaware.

"Castiel."

Hearing the voice was like inhaling paint fumes, hearing him say his name was like paint drying in his throat. Cas almost instantly wanted to pass out, to escape the cloud of fear and hatred that seemed to seep into his skin. Instead, he was rooted to the spot by the hand that seemed to burn his shoulder. He couldn't do anything.

It seemed that today was going to be one of those days where he didn't speak, just gritted his teeth and waited for Luke to go away.

"How's the beginning of your school year been, Castiel?" he asked, the words dripping so dangerously with venom that Castiel would have to be among the stupidest to fall for their polite guise. While he spoke, Luke ran his hand from Castiel's shoulder down to his hand, catching it before Cas could get away. He felt his knuckles hit the wall.

Even though he could move, he could escape if he really tried, Castiel just remained. Somehow he knew that if he did make a move to leave, he'd face something much worse than a conversation in close quarters.

When Luke spoke again, he was closer and it seemed every part of his body was a paper-thin distance from Castiel's. He could feel his breath on his ear.

"My offer still stands."

Cas shied away from the hot air and the words that seemed to drip into his ear. Wet paint that escaped his efforts to clean it, that collected in his body, that stained parts of his mind. A color he was painted that he didn't choose. Cas held no control here.

"I can fix you."

Anything he tried to paint after, any claim he tried to stake to his own life, would be too thin, too runny to do anything. He was marked by this, by the broken he tried so desperately to fill with color and things he wanted. But the broken pieces remained, covered in shades of dark.

The thoughts and the words that bounced around his mind like toxic paintballs had him trying in vain to shake them out.

"Not interested?"

Cas just kept shaking his head.

"Maybe next time."

And before he could stop it he felt his hand move again, still trapped in the vice grip. A sullying color that slid its way between his fingers and stayed, indelible. He felt his palm exposed to the light of the room, the color exposed to anyone who looked. A soft press of a pair of lips felt like little needles marking and tattooing his sentence into his hand and Castiel almost lost control then and there. But the light gesture left a very real pain that crippled Castiel as Luke walked away. Slowly, he sank to the floor, right arm limp, too stained and broken to deserve even a second glance, left arm clawing away at his jeans like he could dig to the root of everything, tear it out and burn it. There was no use though. Castiel had painted a façade so perfect that not even he was getting through. Only the person who painted what was hidden underneath could see past his lies.

He stayed there, against the wall, for some time. No part of him wanted to move, too scared of the risk.

Instead, he pushed his thumb into the tender spot on his wrist, willing the pain of someone else away with his own. But it only hurt more, only brought tears to his eyes.

More time passed.

Eventually, all the footsteps in the hallway quieted. The silence came as a welcome lacquer, another layer to protect him. And then the footsteps returned, thudding to the rhythm that Cas' blood pounded through his veins, quickening with his pulse. Closer, closer.

"Cas."

He heard Meg kneel beside him, her jacket moving as she did, her knees hitting the floor, her heavy breathing out of fear and exertion.

Meg didn't reach for him though. She kept a distance and spoke low and soft.

"Did he hurt you?"

Softly, Cas shook his head, letting it fall back against the wall. His eyes stayed closed, never removing the only safety he had. Never washing away the only layer of paint he could pour over his world. Still, amidst the black, he heard Meg's voice.

"Cas, move your hands," she said, an urgency slowly bleeding into her tone.

He let himself relax and when he did, Meg pulled his hands away from each other.

"Let's get up, okay?" Cas nodded and let her help him to his feet.

The rest of it fell out of focus from there. There were bits he noticed like the bus' horn, the lurch of the seat as they pulled to a stop, the pavement beneath his feet and Meg. Meg who stayed there with him, letting him into his empty house with the key on the porchlight. Meg who deposited him and his things in his room before dropping next to him on his bed.

There was a silence pulled taught between them by Meg's seething anger and Castiel's exhaustion.

"It's been a while since…"

Cas nodded. It had been. Two weeks since he'd been cornered last and he'd gotten complacent.

"Yeah."

Meg looked over to him, her eyes betraying how hurt she was by the whole thing. "If he fucks with you again, I'll beat the shit out of him."

"If I wanted you to do that, I'd do it myself," Castiel assured her.

Meg just nodded before standing and taking her things. "I know, Clarence, that's the problem."

He simply stared up at the ceiling from his place on his bed. Once the familiar stars he had painted grew boring, he rolled over to face his desk.

The sharpie from his stippling practice lay on the surface.

His focus shifted to his right arm. The dark tint had been rubbed off by his own fussing and the pressure of another hand.

Rising slowly, Castiel moved to take the pen from the tabletop. He switched the thing between his fingers, dancing with the idea, committing more in his mind that his hands would allow him to convey.

He uncapped it, but he didn't move to draw.

_"What does that even mean?" Luke looked up at him, a weird half-sneer on his face._

_Cas paused. "It, uh," he thought about a way to simplify it, "I guess it means I don't want to have sex."_

_"What the fuck?"_

_Cas rubbed the pad of his thumb across the inside of his wrists, trying to avoid the stares of his friends._

_Finally, someone spoke. "Oh, I get it." Cas looked up at Luke, his eyes portraying nothing but hope._

_"You do?"_

_Slowly, Luke nodded. "Yeah." His soft smile turned into a glare. "You're just a bitch."_

_And all the hope in Cas' eyes shattered. Little shrapnels of glass landed everywhere and he wanted, so desperately, to cry._

_"No, I'm not," he said, turning his thumb until the tip of his nail pulled lightly over the veins there. "I'm not."_

_In his peripherals, he saw Michael tap Zach on the shoulder. "He's like one of those fuckin' strawberries we learned about in the fifth grade." He was whispering, but Zach's laugh spit even more shards towards Cas and he felt even more like he wanted to escape._

_"You're like some sort of freak, aren't you?"_

_Finally looping his fingers around his wrist, twisting and pulling like the pain would make everything disappear, Cas started crying. "I'm not," he said, maintaining a small amount of control over his voice._

_"Why the fuck are you crying?"_

_"He's a bitch."_

_Sick laughter worked its way around the circle until it infected each of the boys around him._

_"Or, maybe," Luke started, his eyes locking into Castiel's, "maybe he's just a pussy."_

_Cas just stared, wide-eyed, at the scene in front of him, watching. He didn't have any control, this wasn't about him, really. Not anymore. He'd just have to take it. Take it until they left him alone._

_"Of course he is, look at him!"_

_Luke didn't answer, just inched closer to Castiel, fire behind his eyes. "No, no. I mean what if he's scared." He moved his hand gently to Castiel's knee and he whined under the uncomfortable touch._

_"Are you scared, Cassie?" He moved to lace his fingers with Castiel's, but just before, Cas pulled them just far enough away. Luke held up two surrendering hands._

_"It's okay to be scared," he said, his voice laced with a poisonous sweet something. "All little bitches get scared sometimes." Cas pulled away but Luke moved closer until he wasn't sitting next to him, but kneeling over him. Soft snickering echoed around the group and the walls that slowly trapped Castiel where he was._

_"I'll bet you want it." Before Cas could move, he had his wrist trapped beneath his own hand, burning against the rug. "I'll bet you aren't the prude you say you are."_

_All Cas could do was shake his head, an action Luke mirrored in a distorted caricature of his own movement. He was denying Cas' refusal. He felt more tears burn down his cheeks._

_"I think you want us to just take it. Take it from you like the whore you are." He let go of Cas' hand. "Do you think we should take it?" Sharp words punctuated by a harsh shove to Cas' shoulders, pushing him further into the carpet._

_For the first time since he'd started crying, Cas whispered a pitiful, "No." Unconsciously, his body curled in on itself and he found himself trying to back away as the carpet beneath him darkened under Luke's shadow. Little, "please"s and "no"s fell out of his mouth until he couldn't speak anymore. Until the silence of everyone else was overwhelming._

_"You're right, Luke," Zach said, crossing the room to look Cas in the eyes, "he's just a bitch."_

_Castiel laid on the carpet of his own basement for a long while, slamming doors and jeering laughs out the window above his head only white noise._

_Everything else came into focus. Bruises sculpting pain and fear into every nerve, burns sanding hope from his raw skin, tears etching a memory into his mind._

_His hands grasped for something to cover up the marks, something to hide how he'd lost. Anything._

It took several moments and a few tries of shaking his head before Cas could focus on his wrist again. The sharpie started moving again, the indelible ink tracing a pattern he'd drawn time and time again, always mesmerized by the way the ink spread across his skin.

It was a mark he left, not a bruising purple pressed into his skin by someone else.

The little spade was a marker, a reminder that he was still there, unbroken and okay. If it faded away he could draw it again. He could shade in the dying pieces. Bring life to the disappearing parts.

Once it was dark again, he set the pen down, breathing cool air over the fresh mark.

It was going to be better soon.

TUESDAY

Much as he'd expected, two weeks of nothing was simply a fluke. Meg turned down the stairs and Cas continued through the layers of people towards his English class. As the people surrounding him peeled away, layer after layer of old paint flaking off to reveal the old wood to whatever lay ahead.

"Castiel," he said, almost calling him over.

Instead of listening, Castiel moved past him to enter the classroom, tranquil for a moment in the beautiful image it offered, only for it to be torn by a hand pulling at his shoulder.

As the last remaining people filtered into classrooms, collecting the last of the chipping paint and sweeping it away, Castiel was left vulnerable, without even evidence that he was once protected.

The same hand from yesterday wrapped itself around his wrist and pinned it to the wall behind him, and the other reached for his neck, resting there, poised to cover more of him with the awful color. Instead, his thumb brushed along his cheekbones, almost summoning the color that appeared there, like he was in control of Castiel's shame.

Shivering under the touch, Castiel remained steely-eyed. He took in the full color image before him with a strength he hadn't felt in a long time. As he did it, the details jumped out like flaws in his work. Every one of them a reason to hate what was before him, and hate he did, but he refused to cover it in black and let it dry unseen.

"Let me go."

Something flashed in Luke's eyes, and his grip on Castiel's wrist tightened before he brought his hand underneath Castiel's chin. The bell rang around them, the sound echoing in Castiel's mind as he awaited the next words.

"No. You still need fixing."

Before Castiel could think what the words meant, he was no longer trapped simply by the weight of Luke's hands, but by his lips pressed hard to Castiel's.

Revulsion ripped through his body like blackened ink. Every part of him revolted against the stain that bled through all of Castiel, trying to cover it or even cap the bottle it spilled from, but Luke was gone before Castiel could move.

Willing his body to do anything but collapse on the floor of the hallway, Castiel entered the classroom to two pairs of eyes that could see where his lips were darkened with a shade he couldn't ask for. Two people who knew what happened.

Mr. Shurley averted his eyes as the rest of his teachers had done, only pity glinting off of them.

Dean looked closely though. He knew only vague _somethings_ , but enough for Castiel to feel a different blush rise to his cheeks as he passed the boy's desk and pray he mentioned nothing.

He slid into the chair, refusing to let it make that sound and call every pair of eyes to him.

Mr. Shurely began his lecture, something about masculine and feminine rhymes that he'd learned ages ago. Castiel focused instead on his desk, never looking away, basking in the ignorance it held before him.

Some crude drawings and phrases were to be expected and the obligatory sketch of an eye he could assume was done by a freshman the period before. Eraser shavings and marks covered the expanse of the tabletop and gave Cas reason to keep looking down as Mr. Shurley explained the value of syllables to the ignorant.

"And what is one of the uses of masculine and feminine rhymes, Castiel?" he asked, trying to make eye contact where Cas wouldn't.

Deciding to focus on the syllable breakdowns on the board Castiel said, "Masculine rhymes offer more punctual endings to lines or stanzas. They're more forceful, like your stereotypical man," there was a scoff behind him, but he continued, determined to get this over with with as little interference as possible, "and place more emphasis on the words that are being rhymed to get the words across. Feminine rhymes have a smooth flow and are spoken with less stress to the rhymed word. They convey more of a tone and poems with mostly feminine rhymes are often seen as emotional," he paused, wary of the student behind him, "like a stereotypical woman."

"Well that's dumb," the same person said, and while he agreed, Castiel had no interest in a heated conversation over gendered prose at nine-thirty in the morning.

Shurley had other ideas. "And why is that, Mr. Winchester?"

Cas turned to focus his eyes on Dean's. He was struck for just a moment by how far he was from capturing the beauty of the human eye in a pencil sketch. Dean seemed less affected.

"Because isn't every male poet, like, _super_ emotional? What is that ‘lady' poem by that one dude? His name was like half initials? Whatever, it was emotional as hell."

Cas looked up at the ceiling, recalling the poems he'd read by male poets with initials for names. _Portrait of a Lady_ by T. S. Eliot? _Lady Weeping at the Crossroads_ by W. H. Auden?

" _Upon a Dying Lady_ by W. B. Yeats?" he asked before he could stop himself. Now everyone's eyes were on him.

And even though that fear seemed to consume Castiel whole, he only focused on how Dean's eyes lit up at his words. "Yes! Super emotional, yeah?" The question was posed to Mr. Shurley, but his eyes were on Cas who, even though what felt like the view of all the world's critics was upon him, felt bold enough to talk.

"Yes." Fear crept into his mind again, shadowy and dark, but he continued, "She has not grown uncivil As narrow natures would And called the pleasures evil Happier days thought good; She knows herself a woman No red and white of a face, Or rank, raised from a common Unreckonable race; And how should her heart fail her Or sickness break her will With her dead brother's valor For an example still."

He looked back to see Dean counting on his fingers. "All of those are masculine rhymes, and it's still making me want to cry. I don't get the gendering," he said, finally focusing on Mr. Shurley.

The teacher in question simply crossed his arms over his chest and looked between Dean and Castiel with an indiscernible expression. "If you prefer, another explanation is that, like women, female rhymes are more complicated because they have two syllables instead of one."

"That's worse." They both said it, garnering another look from Mr. Shurley.

"Well, if you both think so, you can discuss it after class, we've got some more poetry to read," he said, returning his focus to the board behind him.

Castiel risked a look back at Dean only to find him smiling. It seemed all the skepticism from earlier had disappeared, replaced with the comforting rapport they'd had. Cas felt all the fear wash off from his thoughts and turned back to the front of the room, somehow invigorated by a simple discussion of rhymes. Maybe he could do it.

Sometime later, Cas found himself in the physics room, staring angrily at a sheet of lined paper and his open textbook. The paper was nearly ruined from all the erasing he'd done. "Fuck calculus," he muttered to no one in particular.

"Language, Cas," Ms. Mills said from her desk, the words so apathetic Cas was surprised she'd even bothered to say them. There wasn't even anyone in the room for him to make a bad impression on so-

A backpack landed on the ground next to him and Cas looked up to meet Dean's eyes. Oh.

"Need some help?" he asked, silently pulling his chair out to sit next to him. He pulled the book to his side of the desk, examining the assignment highlighted within.

Cas just held the pencil out to him. "Desperately."

"Is this just," he flipped the pages, counting, "oh, I know what this is." Cas turned a skeptical eye on him. "This is a drill and kill assignment." The nearly inhuman sound Cas made from deep in his throat was assent enough. "Yeah, Crowley fuckin' sucks."

"Dean, language."

"Sorry, Ms. Mills." He turned back to Cas, sliding the paper across the space between them. "So, there's an upside to these."

Shaking his head, Cas voiced his disagreement, "Math doesn't have many upsides, Dean."

Dean just kept talking and copying down the problem. "The upside is that once I explain one, you can just go off that for the other problems. That way," he tapped Cas on the shoulder with the eraser end of the pencil on each of his words, "I won't keep botherin' you."

Having been doing so for the past ten minutes, Cas said the next thing that popped into his head, "That's not an upside."

"What?"

"Nothing," Cas said with a plastered flippancy that bound to melt away just from the heat rising on his cheeks. Dean didn't seem to notice, just laughing off the words.

Then, before Cas could understand it, Dean had Castiel's wrist in his hand. Time seemed to freeze when Cas felt his pulse pounding against more than just his skin. The brightness of the world dropped to almost nothing and like every other time, he was trapped.

The touch was black ink from a white well and Cas could do nothing but stare and hold back shaking breaths.

Dean blinked a few times at the way Cas shrank back into himself. "C'mon, don't deer-in-headlights me, it's just math, buddy." Cas' fingers curled around the pencil Dean had put there amidst his words, both his hands gently resting around his own.

With the caution he reserved for a situation he'd rather not have imagined, Cas drew his hand back. When Dean's didn't chase, he let himself relax. Let himself breathe.

Cas' eyes softened. "Right, just math."

"Just math," Dean repeated, calm and comforting. "I'll walk you through it."

And he did, same as the first time, with calm words and thorough explanations that made everything a little easier. Instead of mashes of numbers and letters that made no sense, everything seemed to have been dusted off, cleaned of everything that made it confusing.

"So," Dean said, tapping lightly where Cas had written the first half of his answer. "The inverse of the derivative of function ‘f' with respect to ‘x,' where ‘x' is sixteen over three, is equal to what?"

Instead of saying it, instead of speaking words that could be wrong, Cas jotted what he thought was the answer onto the graph paper before him.

He could feel a hand on his shoulder, soft and reassuring instead of weighted and directing. "And that, my friend, is the correct answer."

When Cas looked over, at the words "my friend" and when he did, Dean was closer than he expected. His eyes shone bright with something like pride. Cas felt protected by that pride, after all, Dean wasn't going to be proud of something he was going to abandon for a little broken part, right?

Castiel decided he was right just as the bell rang, signaling the end of their lunch. He packed up his math stuff, replacing it with his physics textbook.

"Thank you for the help, Dean."

Dean simply smiled up at him from where he was pulling out his own books. Once he was settled, he turned back to Cas, light fingers dancing across his arm pulling his attention away from the problems of the night's homework. "Hey, speaking of helping, thanks for backing me up in English this morning."

"You were right, I don't see why I wouldn't have," Cas said, a small amount distracted by the fingers tapping lightly on his arm, almost absent-minded. There was no threat, and it felt hard to convince his mind of that, that Dean made his motions with a clean brush, no sinister anything behind them.

"No, seriously," he said, the insistence in his voice clear, "it's great to have someone who can just quote prose like that on my team." Dean's other hand came up onto the desk, resting so close to Castiel's arm and some part of Cas just wanted to take his hand in his and forget about the consequences, but he couldn't. The risks, the consequences, the dangers, they haunted him, hanging just behind him always. They were unforgettable and Cas could never be bold enough to take Dean's hand, too afraid of never getting it back or pulling back a marred version of something he'd trained to create beauty.

"It's not exactly a skill in high demand," Cas mumbled, embarrassed by the praise.

"Well, here I am, demanding it. From now on all of my friends have to be able to quote Yeats on cue." There looked to be something behind the amusement Dean's eyes. It looked like there was something else he wanted to demand. The black of his irises seemed to consume the green, worry seemed to darken his whole expression, but he stayed silent.

Cas was grateful. They were friends, nothing else, and it didn't matter the something else Cas might've wanted. Someone who was only a friend, and only for a day at that, didn't need to wade through the colors of his heart just yet.

_Then he struggled with the heart, innocence and peace depart._

WEDNESDAY

When Cas stepped out of math after the final bell, Meg was already there. There was a tension in her posture, a caution in the way that she scanned the faces leaving the classroom, that reminded Castiel of those times freshmen would lay their fingers on her artwork. She was worried, but not for any kind of artwork; she was worried about Castiel.

Stopping beside where she stood, Castiel gave her a disapproving glance before walking towards the building's side door. She caught up soon enough, her boots clicking on the tile next to the silence of his sneakers.

"You know, Meg, I don't need an escort." At her raised eyebrows he added, " _Either_ kind of escort."

"Oh, angel, if you wanted one, you'd have one, but," there was a light pulling on his sleeve as Meg led him around the corner, "seriously, listen."

Her tone caught Castiel by surprise. Meg was always the one to bring him back to life with something quick-witted and humorous, she would always have something good to say. This felt more like the opposite, and despite not knowing what words were going to follow, Castiel dreaded them. It must've shown on his face because Meg laid a reassuring hand on his arm.

"Don't worry, nothing bad, I'm-I'm just a little worried about you, is all."

Castiel never wanted that worry, from her or anyone. He buried his own feelings, trapping them beneath paperweights and drawing pretty pictures on top to distract from how they ate away at him. If he wasn't going to deal with it, why should anyone else?

He opened his mouth to protest her concern when she slipped her hand into his. "Cas, stop. We both know you're miserable. This is unsustainable."

Normally her hand in his would have been a gesture he clung to. It would have been a comforting touch in a world where someone reaching for him meant they wanted to hurt him. Now, it was the opposite. Castiel pulled his hand away and backed himself closer to the wall, looking down at the ground instead of Meg. "I've been sustaining it."

"Three years is too long," Meg insisted, curling her arms back towards her body. "He's hurting you, Cas, and it's getting worse. I'm not blind and neither are you. Let me help you."

Castiel was tired of this. He'd said no time and time again, still, she insisted. It was like she didn't get it, like she didn't know that her help would only serve to destroy the pieces of his life that hadn't already been demolished.

"What could you do, Meg?" he asked, spitting the words at her like a challenge. "Tell someone? Douse me in sugar-sweet honey so all of his friends are drawn to me like fucking flies? Beat the shit out of him so the next time he comes he doesn't just leave bruises, but breaks my arm?" He let out a hollow laugh, eyes searching Meg's for some sort of answer. "You can't do anything."

Meg looked down at her own feet. Castiel watched as her mouth opened and closed as she searched for words. "I just don't like seeing you hurt, Cas."

Cas couldn't help it. At her words, he reached out and pulled Meg into a hug. He rested his chin on her head and took a moment to find comfort in the embrace, letting his confidence, no matter how false it may have been, seep out of him and into her. "You're being a real trooper, Meg."

"Shut up," she mumbled into the fabric of his shirt, wrapping her arms around him anyway.

Against what the mix of emotions roiling in his stomach was telling him to do, he smiled. "Everything that you already do for me is enough," he reminded her, pulling her ever closer to his body. When he did move away, he put a soft hand on the side of her face so he could get the next words out. "I don't know what I'd do without you."

He was met with a rare, sincere smile, but before she could say anything, a third voice came from around the corner.

"Hey, Cas, is everything alright, I heard yellin-" Dean came around the corner, any semblance of concern dripping from his face once he laid eyes on Meg and Castiel. "Oh, my god, I'm so fucking sorry. I didn't mean-I don't-My bad." Flustered, the boy held up a hand and waved it in front of him, trying valiantly to erase the past few seconds to no avail.

Cas, on the other hand, was instantly pulled out of the moment with Meg, instead, he focused on fitting together puzzle pieces and paper scraps to form some kind of idea about what was happening. Dean's red flushed face, his hand on Meg's face, their proximity. That plus the after-hours aspect and the dark hallway. Oh no.

The second he realized what Dean must've thought, Cas pulled back from Meg and stepped toward the frozen boy. He raised his hand to repaint any misconceptions he'd created, but before he could get close enough, Meg was by his side. The look on her face, curious, dangerous, gave him pause.

"You're Dean, right?" she asked, stepping past Castiel.

"Yes?" Dean said, slowly bringing his hand down. His eyes flicked to Cas, a silent cry for help, but his lab partner had no answers for him.

"Don't answer questions with other questions, pretty boy. Is it or is it not?" Cas was struck by how easily she switched out one palette for another, traits switched out and washed off like pigments. In seconds she was back to being cool, hard, and judgemental, all traces of their conversation wiped clean.

Thankfully, Dean rose to her challenge. His posture straightened and confidence slipped back into his voice when he said, "Yeah, I'm Dean."

From where he stood behind her Cas could see Meg's eyebrows raise. Whether it was because she was impressed or the polar opposite, Castiel didn't know. What he did know was that, seconds later, she was in action again, moving back towards him and wrapping an arm around his waist.

"Well, thank you for attempting to come to the rescue of my dear Castiel." As she spoke, he felt her hand tighten around him. "Of course, there's nothing naughty going on over here, so your services as a brave knight aren't needed, but it's the thought that counts, isn't it?" she said with a wink.

Dean gave her a half-smile in return, bringing a hand up to rub at the back of his neck. "Yeah, well, anything for a friend, right?" he asked, shrugging.

"Right…" Meg glanced between Dean and Castiel, an obvious skepticism in her eyes.

"Well," Dean said, clearing his throat, "good talking to you, sorry for, uhm, interrupting your, uhm, moment." His hands moved wildly as he spoke, pointing at Meg, gesturing to the room, and finally, pointing behind himself with a thumb while he stumbled over his words. "I'll just-yeah, bye." With that, he turned on his heel and began to walk away.

It was then that Cas realized Meg had done nothing to correct Dean's mistake. He stepped forward, speaking before he could think. "Dean, wait."

The other boy froze, turning slowly back to Cas. "Yeah?" he asked, taking a cautious step forward and showing Cas just how tired and uncomfortable he still was, despite the kind smile on his face and the brightness in his eyes that wasn't there when he'd spoken to Meg.

So, instead of taking up more of his time with rambling sentences and confusing explanations, Castiel just asked, "I'll see you tomorrow?"

Dean laughed out loud, the sound echoing off the empty walls and dripping white into the colors of Cas' heart. Nodding his head minutely, he said, "Yeah, Cas, I'll see you tomorrow. Good luck with your calculus homework." With a small wave, he turned and walked down the hallway.

Slipping her hand from around his waist, Meg looked over at him. "Oh, Castiel, you're gone on him, aren't you?"

"It's only been a day, Meg," he said, grabbing his backpack from where it had ended up on the floor.

"Yes," she mused, picking up her own and starting down the hallway. "I'm not wrong though."

With a heavy sigh, Cas shook his head. "No, no you are not."

THURSDAY

Cas couldn't help but notice that Dean was acting off on Thursday.

He was reserved, more secluded to his side of their shared desks. His voice remained quiet and pale, lacking in the emotion Cas looked forward to. Their conversations were flat, no details and layers cropping up. There was nothing.

It left Cas feeling devoid of color, blank and disappointed.

Normally, he'd have let it slide, returning to the same brushstrokes of the past four years, but normally, he didn't care about his desk partner. Normally, the blank slate was a weight lifted, but Dean's sudden desaturation was a sadness that dripped thick across his day.

So, he did something about it.

Dean was in the physics room during lunch, sitting at their desk. Cas could see from where he stood in the door, and the sight made him question his steady resolve.

Dean looked peaceful, the world around him still. So still that Cas was afraid to breathe, to send ripples through the still drying paint before him. Cas didn't want to be the one brushstroke, the one shade too dark, the one mistake that disturbed it. But maybe, he thought, for the sake of the final picture, he had to.

Pushing himself off the wood of the doorframe, he stepped into the classroom. His feet on the tile was the only sound in the room, and each step sent a

His desk partner didn't look up when Cas approached. Instead, he froze.

It felt like it was up to Castiel. Sit down, leave the subject as it was and hope it looked fine in the end or change that one little detail and hope it didn't ruin the whole thing.

"Dean, what's going on?" he asked, laying a hand across Dean's AP calculus homework. There. A handprint was a pretty big disruption.

"Nothing, Cas," he said, brushing him off and putting everything the way it had been.

Cas wasn't having it.

"No, Dean, ignoring me isn't ‘nothing'."

Dean remained silent until he ran out of room on his paper and calculus problems to distract from Castiel. He looked up.

Cas caught the way his eyes moved, taking in every small detail of Cas' face, watching for changes, things he didn't like. When he met Cas' eyes, all scrutiny was gone, replaced by a smile curling at the corner of his mouth.

That, Castiel realized, was why he'd taken the risk. "What's going on, Dean?"

"I'm worried, Cas."

Cas squinted. _Worry_ was not the emotion he'd gleaned. "About what?"

"Us."

The world froze. Cas' heart seemed to stop. It was all laid out on a canvas before him, waiting, just _waiting_ for him to do something.

"You have nothing to worry about," Cas said, finishing it off with a glossy coat, having found the painting close to perfect to begin with. "We're friends, Dean, and I'm very happy about that."

When Dean blinked, looking down and away to process the words, Cas could have sworn he'd caught another glimpse of the dull color that had painted their morning, but it was gone far too quickly for him to discern what it might have been.

It was replaced with a colorful shade of green and a smile that made Cas certain he'd made the right choice.

"Good, Cas, I'm glad to hear it."

FRIDAY

First period, forty minutes during which Cas worked on his ballpoint drawing. He'd chosen purple pen and the focal point of the image was a hand reaching through what would later become clouds.

Meg had said, fully as a joke, "fog, the void and darkness" when he'd asked what to do for his concentration. Now, he was creating twelve pieces on "fog, the void, and darkness". So far, it had turned out well. Each image had been in a different medium, each with an emotion-evoking depth that Castiel couldn't help but feel proud of.

Except for the one in his hand.

Cas stood by the door, waiting for Meg and his brain. His arm was poised over the recycle bin, holding the ballpoint drawing above it, he just needed something to tell his arm to drop it.

"Clarence, what the fuck are you doing?"

Steeling himself, Castiel held his hand a little further into the blue bin. "I'm throwing this away."

Meg, of course, was having none of it. Folding her arms, Cas could just tell, she said, "Sure you are. Why?"

Castiel felt all the presentation slip out of his shoulders, clay dripping from its sculpted form and leaving the skeletal pieces meant to support it. Only Castiel's resolve and the tips of his fingers held onto the drawing, his body had given up.

"I'm not going to finish it."

"Why?"

"It's messed up and it's in pen and I love it but how do you come back from a mistake like this?" he gestured to a dark purple mark down the center of the page.

Finally moving from her place behind him, Meg took the paper from his hand, examining the mark.

"You make it a pole, you give the background some wood chips, you call the drawing ‘jungle gym', and you make it a childlike hand," she said, handing it back to him.

When Cas looked down again, he could see Meg's suggestions as if they were already on paper. She'd dusted off what he'd been staring at for hours and revealed something different.

Castiel could feel the guilt crowd his hands, clinging like oil pastels. Meg shouldn't have to point his fixes out to him. Something sick curled dark in his stomach, he'd just given up on something that looked a little hopeless. What kind of person did that make him?

"Don't sweat it, angel," Meg said, appearing to read his thoughts, "we're all blind to the good stuff sometimes. Fresh eyes don't make you a bad artist. It's still your work on the page."

Nodding, Castiel slipped the paper back into his folder. It was still his work, it was still good. "Thank you, Meg."

Instead of trying to talk over the bell, ringing sharp through the room, she smiled at him and headed to her next class.

After Castiel escaped the guilt and hate of the tail end of his art class, the fear began to creep up on his. The five minutes between his first two periods seemed to last forever, like the seconds had been glued to their space on the clock, unmoving until Castiel faced what he didn't want to.

It wasn't the class, that he was fine with - poetry was easy - but Mr. Shurley changed their seats regularly and today was that day. All the puzzle pieces he'd picked out and placed would be strewn around to sort again, and starting over was always miserable.

There were several people in his English class that, while not as abrasive as Luke, would make a month sitting next to them miserable.

When he entered the room, though, the last thing he expected to see was his name projected on the seating chart where it was. In the back of the room, next to one Dean Winchester.

Looking back at the seat itself, he found a waving Dean. Navigating the desks, Castiel stood to him.

"Fancy seeing you here, Poetry Man, how goes it?"

Cas cast a sideways glance at his desk partner, trying to see if Dean was really asking or if he was putting out a formality for anyone he sat next to.

After a few seconds of silence, Dean's smile fell a little, and the bright green dripped from his eyes leaving something bland and far too common for him to want to paint with. "Cas? You good?"

"Oh, yes, I'm fine," he said, finally sitting down.

Cas pulled out the anthology they were getting their poems from and his sketchbook. He was in the back of the room, it was like he had been granted freedom and Cas planned to take full advantage of that.

"Do you draw during class?"

Cas looked over at Dean whose eyes were trained intently on his sketches from the day before. Realizing what it was, he quickly switched to a new page. One that didn't have a drawing of Dean's bracelet clad right arm, from the exact angle Cas got from his seat next to him in physics.

"Um, yes, occasionally."

Dean's features settled into a soft smile. "Would you," he paused, smile falling from his face.

"Yes, Dean?" Cas prompted, anything to see the smile return.

"Would you draw me sometime?" The words tumbled out, spilling every pen he'd used to draft his emotions before Castiel.

Normally he would scoff in his head and politely turn down the request, but Castiel could only find himself staring back at Dean, not daring to say, "I already have." Instead, he opted for, "perhaps," and turned back to his notebook, traces of a profile taking shape.

It continued like that for another week, Dean just offering up a conversation where Castiel least expected it. Cas found himself making space in his life for the new colors Dean introduced. He looked forward to classes he'd dreaded, he found ease in things he'd only seen as difficult and found himself wanting to speak to Dean more and more.

When they spoke about school or his art or anything even, Castiel found himself doing something akin to mixing shades he'd never thought to use before, adding range he'd never explored. His life had been made up of clean lines and separated colors and with Dean, they seemed to bleed into one another. It all brought a new vibrancy to Castiel and the life he drew out for himself.

Dean was a white to blend into the dark he'd been trapped in and Cas was grateful for everything he was.

MONDAY

Monday, Cas made a decision.

He played with it throughout his first few periods, kneading the idea into something he'd be bold enough to do, and by the time lunch rolled around, the clay was soft enough to work with.

Meg was at their lockers before him, already sitting on the floor. "I'm going to go upstairs," he said as he grabbed his lunch from his locker. He moved quickly, fearing that if he stopped for even a second, his model would melt under his fingers or worse, harden to a brick and leave him terrified and frozen.

Of course, there would always be something standing in the way of efficiency.

"I'm sorry," she started, stopping him cold. He could hear the rustle of the leather she wore and the sound of her boots on the linoleum, each one a dent in the model he was molding. "You're interacting with people _voluntarily_?"

"Yes?" He felt the question creep into his voice. His feet felt heavy and his resolve started to crack in his hands.

Meg stared for a minute, eyes dark and questioning. She couldn't see what he was making, only that he had _something_ going through his head. Cas was grateful that she didn't know. "I'm going to go upstairs."

Features softening with the realization that Cas wasn't going to tell her anything more specific, Meg said, "Okay," but before he could walk away again, she was wrapping her arms around him. The gesture was unfamiliar and uncomfortable, but the intention behind it was clear. _I'm proud of you_. Hesitantly, Castiel returned the embrace, silently thanking her for the words she wouldn't say out loud. It didn't last much longer than that, though, and Meg pulled away with a cough, resting a hand on his arm. "You have fun, angel."

"I will try," Cas promised, clutching the remainder of his determination close to himself, not daring to expose it for fear of it melting away.

With that, he turned and walked down the hall, footsteps drowned out by the dense volume in the hallway.

Soon, though, the people thinned out, dusted away and disappeared, leaving Castiel alone on the stairs. His footfalls echoed, clay confidence dripping where he stepped. By the time he reached the physics room, the only remainder of the stuff was the residue on his hands, clinging to his palms. He could wipe it off on his jeans and turn around, the scenario he'd sculpted gone forever.

Instead, he walked in.

There was someone in his seat. Not a good start although a glance around the room opened several options, including an open seat in the back. Walking as quietly as he could, careful not to drop the remainder of his courage onto the floor beneath him, he made his way to the back of the room.

The noise of the people in the room was overwhelming. Conversations clashed like colors and Cas barely escaped being drenched in it, being overwhelmed with jealousy. But that wasn't the reason he was here.

As if on cue, Dean made his way to the front of the room, standing in the foreground as if he belonged there.

Hearing Dean made the rest of it fall away. Cas crossed his legs on his chair and let Dean's words be the background to his sketches. As Dean spoke, the paper before him filled with graphite lines and shadows until they formed something so plainly Dean that even those who'd only seen him in passing could tell. The dark dotted freckles near the top of the page. The defined jaw. The quirk at the corner of the subject's mouth. It was Dean.

Cas just wished that he had green, the proper green to put that color on paper. But, looking at his pencils, no mix of the shades he possessed would do. So he settled for looking.

He watched as Dean spoke animatedly, pride and joy shining from somewhere deep within him. It was another thing his two-dimensional mediums could never hope to capture. His hands moved and he bounced with excitement and he spoke with the poise of someone who knew and someone who cared all at once.

Cas was stuck, once again, just had he'd found himself some time ago. Admiring Dean from afar like the boy was made from marble. And again, far too soon, the artwork burst into pieces as Dean finished his presentation and moved over to his friends.

One glance at the clock told him he had twenty minutes before he could forge some excuse to talk to Dean. Until then, he would stay there and polish out the pencil scratches out of his drawing.

After a minute or two of buffing the harsh lines with the soft pad of his thumb, Castiel deemed his fingers too oily and the inevitable transfer of the grey particles not worth it. He kept his face to the ground as he walked toward the supplies on the windowsill. He pulled three tissues out and returning to his desk. He was about to sit down when he realized there was someone else there. Except, not just someone else. Dean. Dean was standing, fingers gently hovering over the drawing, with something unreadable on his face.

Terror tore through Cas like he was made of tissue paper. "Oh, you don't have to-" He stepped forward, unsure of what the action would do, simply moving out of the need to do _something_.

"I love it."

Cas found himself frozen, steps away from Dean and completely, absolutely stunned. "What?"

"This is awesome, Cas," Dean said, finally picking up his notebook.

Cas had no idea what to do. His art- that art- was something so personal, something so secret that he'd never planned to show it to another soul. And here Dean was, looking. All Cas could say was, "Thank you."

Dean's fingers moved up the edges of the paper, careful not to touch the drawing itself. Awe seemed to drip from the tips of his fingers, reverence left as residue over the layer Castiel had left. No one had looked at his work like that before or, at least, not in front of him, which was why, when Dean opened his mouth to speak, the words, "Can I keep it?" left Castiel speechless.

"What?"

Dean set the book down, turning to look at Cas. "It is of me, right?"

Cas could only nod.

"Then may I keep it?"

Cas couldn't deny him. "Of course, Dean." He reached for the notebook, separating the page with the drawing and making sure it was blank on the other side. Setting down on the table, he pulled slowly at the perforated edge until it came apart from the rest of it.

Dean looked down at it again when he took it. "Gotta get a frame," he muttered, again to Cas' surprise.

"You're going to frame it?"

A shock like he hadn't expected Cas to hear mixed with a shock like Cas was asking a stupid question outlined Dean's expression. "Yeah, I'm gonna hang it in my room," he said as if it was the plainest thing in the world.

Again, "Thank you," was all Cas could say.

"Of course, I mean, look at it." Dean gestured to the thick paper in his hand. "It's-it's perfect."

That Castiel couldn't accept. "Oh, no, I wouldn't say that."

Dean leveled him with a look. He held the picture up to his face, eyeing it and Cas for a few moments. "I think it's perfect." He set the paper down gently and wrapped an arm around Castiel's shoulders.

Cas immediately tensed, only relaxing a little when he realized no barbed and dangerous edges came with Dean's gesture.

When Dean moved away, Cas found himself looking into his eyes, not only admiring the color but watching for that sincerity that seemed to highlight it. He found it easily.

"Hey, I gotta get back to my friends," he gestured to the group at the front of the room, "but I wanted to say that I'm really, really glad you came back." Cas then realized that Dean had laid a comforting hand on his shoulder as if to say that he'd made the right choice. "And, hey," he held up Cas' drawing, "thanks again. I'll see you in a few."

And then Dean was gone again, once more locked behind a velvet rope, but this time, Cas didn't feel bad for looking.

On the phone with Meg that night, she started asking questions.

"You've been leaving me during lunch, Castiel, what's up?"

She knew. Cas could tell from the condescending tone dripping from her voice, but he didn't feel like admitting anything to her quite yet.

"Nothing," he insisted, running his sharpie of the inside of his wrist to fill in the color his nerves had helped rub off.

Meg let out a sound that was almost a scoff. "Oh, yeah? Bullshit."

"I've just been going to physics early, Meg," he said, once again pulling on half-truths and expecting them to solve his problems.

"Mhm hm. Why?"

Meg had always been good at drawing things from him. Cas was never able to figure out exactly why, but he'd come up with a few good ideas. Cas never trusted people, they'd always betrayed him or shared things or were just plain _awful_ when he decided to let them in, and yet, Cas always found himself wanting to share. He wanted that connection, that confidant. _Someone_. Meg was that for him. She had yet to knock the shattered gift of trust to the floor and leave Cas to gather up what remained. She was there when others did. Maybe he wanted to tell her.

That, or she was just good at getting in his head. Either way, Cas just let his words fall out of his mouth. "Dean. And not just for calculus help."

There was a light laugh from the other end of the line, dusted carefully in pride. "That's awesome, Cas. You need more friends."

And dammit, Cas knew it was another tactic, but he opened his mouth anyway. "I don't want him to just be my friend, Meg."

"I know, Clarence." There was no taunt or malice behind the words, never from Meg. She knew what he'd gone through, she knew his fears and all of it. She wouldn't. Instead, she took a heavy breath and spoke, "I think Dean's a good guy, Cas. I think he'd be good for you but only if you let him."

TUESDAY

The next day with Dean was nothing short of awkward. Now that he'd told Meg, Cas felt like everything he felt was stamped on a canvas for everyone to see. Now he was desperately trying to throw a sheet over the work he wasn't trying to reveal, because he was _not_ ready to tell Dean. Then or maybe ever.

He made it through most of the day without issue, only earning a few curious glances from Dean in English.

Of course, peace was always short-lived.

His feet entered Castiel's field of view before anything. The open hallway before him and two feet center frame. He just stood there, silently picking Castiel apart.

Castiel just breathed, making sure he was surviving as everything else he'd hoped for shattered around him. He didn't dare move and cut himself, stain the glass with his tainted blood. He just kept his hands still as Luke sat down next to him. A hand fell on his knee, anchoring him where he sat.

"We haven't caught up recently, Castiel." Through the denim, he could feel what felt like glass hopelessness digging into his skin. It was a threat. "And I noticed," he paused, reaching a hand to turn Castiel's face towards his own, the fingertips more darkened glass and more danger he didn't risk playing with. "You've been talking to Dean Winchester. Getting awful close." He punctuated his words with a decisive pull to Castiel's tender knee. Supported on a hand, he found himself facing Luke, exposed to whatever was coming.

He kept his eyes low, on the hand that kept him pinned to the conversation and to the shards of his emotions he'd rather have swept away. He never looked up at the eyes that bared his worst nightmare before him.

It didn't stop him.

"I always knew you were a fucking fag, Castiel."

Cas felt himself sink closer to the floor at the words, the glass beneath him more inviting that the words that spit stains on his skin, words that when they landed, never left.

"You're broken _and_ dirty, but it doesn't matter." The hand on his jaw slid to his neck, pressing hard to the sensitive spots there. Each movement a little reminder of the things breaking around him, a little dare to get Castiel to break. Leaning close, Luke whispered, "You're mine to fix."

Cas exploded.

He was consumed by a revulsion unlike anything else and something in his mind just broke. Every color Castiel had hidden in the blackened wells of his mind spilled around him, marking his footprints on the glass floor beneath him. He moved away.

Pushing himself on hands that felt weak, Cas moved away from Luke. Words fell from his lips, dropping blood-stained ink onto the glass below. His words were his own, yes, the first after a span of too much nothing, but they were dipped in danger, weighty enough to break the bold ground he stood on.

There would be dire repercussions. He spoke anyway.

"No, I'm not."

And as the boy before him stepped closer, the glass ground cracked and Castiel's resolve with it. Fear seeped through where his boldness had split and regret oozed out of his new words.

"I'm sorry."

Still pushing closer, Luke knelt next to him, close enough to destroy him.

"You will be." The hand on his wrist clung tighter than it ever had.

Cas focused on his breathing, closing his eyes, creating his own darkness before another could consume him. The pounding footfalls went unnoticed, mistaken for his beating heart, and the rest of it was too confusing to follow.

The thing to pull him out of the abyss was a voice, not Luke's or his own.

"Cas." A voice painted with the shiny shade of concern and an unadulterated urgency, highlighted so delicately that if Cas' eyes had been opened to the image instead of the words before him, he may not have heard it. The voice was darkened by a seething hatred and lit up by an affection he'd never noticed. It was still Dean's voice though. "Hey, Cas, c'mon, buddy."

There was the wary sensation of a hand over his arm, not touching but ready to. "Cas, open your eyes, you're okay now."

And despite feeling the farthest from okay, so close to a dangerous edge still lined with glass, he opened them.

Dean's eyes shone with everything he'd heard. "Can you stand?"

Cas nodded despite being unsure.

"Do you want some help?"

"Yes," he whispered, not trusting his vocal cords to not shatter into thousands of brittle pieces.

Dean knelt before him, offering his arms for Castiel who just reached for his shoulders to steady himself.

Once he was standing, leaning heavily on Dean, there was a soft hand brushing across his face, not digging and bruising, just holding him up.

Cas turned to Dean and his concerned eyes.

"Hey, the bell's gonna ring in a few minutes, are you okay to go to class?"

It all hit him like a wall of darkness. He was still in school, vulnerable and noticeable, especially now. If he went in there, he'd trail ink behind him. An ink that would mark him as whatever broken thing they thought he was.

A shudder shook shards through his body and Cas' leg began shaking, moving with its own volition, trying in vain to shake out what had brought him here.

"Dean," he said, grabbing the boy's arm, his voice breaking as the rest of him did, "I can't."

Moving with a determination Cas could never hope to possess, Dean brought an arm around Cas' shaking form and led him silently to the restroom.

Cas felt each glance of his classmates, each one poking holes in the façade he'd molded. His face burned hot, scalding where his tears dripped ink down his face, only serving to bring more attention to him.

The world blurred around him and Cas lost track of it all, including himself.

Somewhere in the distance, or close to him, he couldn't tell, a door opened and closed. Someone, Dean maybe—probably—threw the deadbolt on the bathroom door. There was the cool of a wall against his back and Castiel leaned on that for support, except the wall didn't have Dean's arms or his tender touches and he found himself slipping until his hands hit the cold tile. He closed his eyes once more.

"Cas," he heard Dean say. Still, he didn't open his eyes. He basked in the brief, calming bliss that came so unexpectedly from the school's restroom. His breaths still shook and his leg still bounced. His whole body remained unsure of itself, terrified and ready to run again. But, after a moment, it all fell away in favor of the blank canvas of Castiel's mind.

Finally taking everything in, Castiel noticed Dean's proximity and then how it didn't scare him. Dean's shoulder brushed his, his pinky tapped next to Cas' own, and his eyes, glassy with something unsaid, stared ahead.

Before he could stop himself, his whole being craving something to protect him, to give him the freedom to rebuild, he leaned his head on Dean's shoulder. He let the paint drip from the tip of the brush until it was safe to use with another color, one meant for creating, not painting over.

Dean's head moved to rest on Cas', protecting the new paint he was still collecting.

"It's gonna be okay, Cas," he said, and his right arm wrapped warmly around Cas' shoulders, such a different sensation than the one before.

The gesture felt so newly comforting that Cas almost melted into it, colors and pigments blending into a shade that he could just tell had the potential to be bright. Happy, maybe. Slipping his own arm around Dean's waist and burying his head into Dean's shoulder, Cas waited for the rejection that never came. Dean just held him a little tighter and kept reminding Cas of a time he'd never thought of, a time where it would be okay.

"Thank you, Dean," he whispered into the warmth of Dean's sweater. He could feel Dean nod against him.

"Always, Cas."

Cas didn't know how long they sat there, how long it took for the darkness to drip off of him and onto the tile, but eventually, he felt light enough to stand.

Dean offered an arm and Cas took it, gratefully, never letting go even when they walked into their physics classroom and sat down in the front.

He didn't know how much longer they sat there, how long Ms. Mills talked about the parameters of their quiz next week, but the whole time, Dean's pinky tapped close to Castiel's, his chair just that much closer.

When the bell finally did ring, they were the last to leave, Dean catching Cas by the elbow before he could walk out.

"It's gonna be okay, Cas."

"I know, Dean."

WEDNESDAY

The solace Cas had found in Dean shattered the following day.

Dean found him in their English room a few minutes before the end of break, walking up to him, his posture kind, his face determined. "Cas, we gotta talk."

And Cas had spent years and years hearing that phrase and coming out on the other side of it many different ways.

The time his seventh-grade friends had simply removed him from the group.

When his freshman homeroom teacher noticed the bruising on his arm.

The time Meg had admitted to harboring a crush on none other than Cas himself.

Every time his father had had a talk with him.

And the only happy one, the time he was pulled from class, the only rising sophomore accepted to the advanced placement art program.

This was none of those. Those Castiel faced with resignation or hope. This only trailed behind it a block of dread he'd have to carve away before reaching any rationality.

What did Dean want?

Instead of asking, Cas simply nodded and stood, following Dean to the back of the classroom.

Dean looked at him with the same shining green eyes he always had except simmering just below, roiling like wax, was dark anger. Dean took a deep breath and looked Castiel in the eyes. "Cas, you gotta tell someone, man."

Instantly, Cas knew he meant the day before. "No, Dean." Concern swept away all anger as Dean's eyes widened impossibly further. Trying anything to avoid the pain he saw before him, Cas said, "I can't."

"You have to." Dean's hands reached for his, stopping just before he couldn't. Dropping them with a sigh he offered, "I will for you if you're scared."

Cas remained adamant. "No."

"Why?" Dean was almost pleading.

Cas took a heavy breath. He wasn't going to sop up Dean's pain and try to fix it, he couldn't keep that up, so, he offered an explanation: "Because if I tell the school then they tell my parents and his parents. And either through questions far too personal for my liking or a ‘slip of the tongue' they find out I'm…" Cas could almost laugh, because what was he? Broken? Weak? Queer? Maybe. There was a word he could've said, an explanation for his silence to slip the pieces back together, but Cas silenced himself and glued the parts as they were.

He held the malformed vase before him in his mind and waited for Dean to accept.

Dean looked at him for a long time, considering the piece before him.

"Okay, Cas, I won't tell," he said, finally.

"Thank you, Dean."

"I feel bad," Cas said. He'd been talking to Meg for about an hour and they'd just gotten to the topic of Dean. "I feel like I should explain it to him."

"Maybe you should," Meg said and he could tell it was much more than a suggestion.

"I don't know…"

Meg just sighed. She and a Cas both knew he needed a hard shove in the right direction. "Clarence, if you care about him at all, he deserves that explanation eventually." Cas hummed a little response, distracted by the pencil drawing of Dean's necklace. "But the question is; if you do explain, do you come out to him?"

"No."

Meg, possibly for the first time ever, was silent.

"Do you think I should?"

Only the sounds of Meg's breathing came from the other line. His phone buzzed against his ear.

_master.meg sent you a post by luke-cifer_

"Meg, what is this?" Except he didn't need to ask. Before him was an Instagram photo, normal except for the way his heart beat a little faster when he noticed the subject was Dean. Except, Dean couldn't have been the reason for Meg's grave tone.

Cas looked at the photo, everything about it. Posted three minutes ago. No comments, six likes. Nothing suspicious there, so he moved back to the photo itself. It was bright in every way imaginable. Sun and color and Dean smiling wider than Cas had ever seen.

Dean and the flag held up behind his head told Cas everything he needed to know. Dean was at Pride in this picture. Before the thought even registered, Cas felt the same pain he'd felt the first day he met Dean, that jealousy that only bloomed into loneliness and isolation that wilted his whole person.

Cas was never going to get that, at least, not with the life he was living right now.

"Did you send this to me simply to depress me, Meg?" he asked, seeing nothing wrong with the photo other than the crushing pain that dropped petals into his stomach.

And then he noticed.

"No."

Cas didn't even bother hanging up the phone, just let it slip somewhere between the couch cushions, too focused on his blurring vision to care about anything else.

It wasn't even that the words hurt, he'd heard them before in every way, shape, and form, but seeing _Dean_ , the person he thought he knew, condone that, _flaunt_ that? It brought his heart sinking down into the black abyss of a color he could never hope to bleach.

Shaking, but having no choice other than to move away from where he was, Cas stood and stumbled to his room. His fingers felt too weak to clench his fists, his eyes felt too weak to cry, his feet were too weak to hold him up. He just collapsed on his sheets, waiting for sleep to swallow him whole.

And the last thing he thought before his mind finally gave up on trying, was the realization that he had just taken a wide and dangerous step back towards that glassy edge.

THURSDAY

Meg tried to talk to him on the following day, far too gentle for the conversation to be innocent. No, it was loaded with the information of the weekend, weighed down by fear for Castiel. He didn't want it.

So, he let every conversation starter drip off of him and land unsuccessfully beneath his feet.

He focused on his drawing. On the black paper in front of him and on the white inkwell next to him. He said nothing and she kept persisting.

Instead of answering Meg's questions, Cas just stood and took a black inkwell from the basket. But she didn't give up. When she asked, "Are you okay?" he flicked more grass blades, adding detail he wasn't giving. When she told him, "I'm sure he didn't mean it", he drew harsh lines, marking a road on the paper. Every question added progress and new elements to the image. Shadows presented themselves with the pressing questions, little places for Cas to hide, little places for Cas to tuck the answers, a darkness where he could keep his emotions safe.

Finally, Meg fell silent and the rest of the world came into focus. The inverted colors before him took their shape, revealing the foggy road he'd painted, almost a complete picture.

"Meg, I'm upset," he finally said, staring down at the image he'd created. He set down the pen on the lid of the ink and pushed the paper to the side.

"That makes sense, Cas."

Letting his head hit the desk, Cas asked, "What do I do?"

"You aren't gonna like what I have to say, angel," she said, leaning up against her desk. There was a light tapping of Meg's eraser on the top of his ear and Cas looked up at her, eyes wide with curiosity and an overpowering amount of fear.

After a moment of staring up at her and her expectant expression, Cas caved. "Could you just say it and put me out of my misery?"

"You have to talk to Dean Winchester."

Cas didn't talk to Dean Winchester during second period English. He dipped any conversation in black ink, covering it before it could turn on him.

Dean kept trying. Dean kept wanting to paint on top of the black, to say something. Cas stopped him every single time.

Eventually, Cas didn't need to shroud the conversation in dark shades any longer. Dean Winchester gave up.

Cas didn't talk to Dean Winchester during fourth-period physics. Dean didn't talk to Castiel Novak either. They sat in silence, working alongside one another, chair pushed as far to the side of the desks as they would reach. The sound of Dean moving his chair across the linoleum, moving away, crawled and crackled across Cas' ears.

Cas caught his eyes every once in a while and looked away before he could let the pain he felt drip onto his cheeks. He stood far too quickly once the bell rang, rushing into the sea of color than dare touch the lead pigment that followed too close for his comfort.

"Are you alright?"

Cas slipped away from the hand destined for his shoulder and just walked away. He could hear the footsteps behind him, following him up the stairs.

It felt like a terrifying echo, an inevitable danger. Cas didn't know when Dean would find out, but he would and those footsteps would follow him closer, a second someone he'd have to run from.

Dean followed him to the art room. He stood in the back, scanning the room, worry coming off of him in waves and crashing against Cas who stood by the counters mixing colors just to have something to do. Dark of his own volition.

He didn't speak to Dean, just let him stew, let him view Castiel's anger as it shook through his fingertips and dripped salt into the colors he was creating.

Eventually, soft footfalls echoed across the linoleum until they stopped only feet away from Cas. He spared a glance back only to see something that caught him completely off-guard. Dean, previously perfect polished marble stood before him broken. His eyes looked weak and pale like the color had fallen from them. His posture had fallen, slumped and frail. He looked at Cas as if he held the answers.

"I don't want to talk to you, Dean," Cas said, turning back to the green that sat before him, mottled across the top with black.

Dean pulled a chair over to him, curling his legs underneath him when he sat.

"So it is me," he said. There was no question to it, he knew now. "What did I do, Cas?" The way his name fell from Dean's mouth, broken, had Cas shaking a little harder where he stood.

Still, he stood his ground and didn't grant him eye contact as he responded, "You decided to be unaccepting and mean."

"What?"

The sloshing and scraping of the paints stopped and the room fell silent. Cas could feel Dean's eyes on him, picking every color on his skin. His face red from tears he refused to let escape, his fingers white where they gripped the neck of the brush, his forearms blue where he'd scrawled the words Dean may as well have said to his face, the gray where his spade was ever fading. Each of them was a shade darkened by the black of Cas' simmering anger. Each of them a shade Dean was using to make sense of the image in front of him. Here was his friend, or whatever Cas had decided they were, upset in front of him. Because of him.

"Cas, what did I do?"

"How are you, of all people, aphobic?" In his heart, he knew it was possible, knew that darkness slipped in even where someone thought they could be safe, but Dean? It felt like violently erasing everything he'd started. That what was left now was a little bit of rubber and a faint outline of what he'd had before. He'd just have to draw over it, but not without explanation as to why the first draft was so goddamn ugly.

Lost in his thoughts, Castiel hadn't noticed Dean's eyes go wide. "Cas, why would you say that?" His voice held the dripping weight of shock.

"Because it's true."

"No," he said, moving so he was directly in front of Cas, inescapably in his line of sight. "That's never been true, why would you say that?"

Cas didn't answer, just returned to his paints.

Then, for the first time ever, Dean laid his hands on him and Cas felt terror flood through his body. Luke he'd grown accustomed to, he'd accepted that a long time ago, no matter how much he knew it was wrong, but Dean, hands wrapped tight around his wrist, that was different.

He acted on the fear coursing through his veins, moving away and out of the grip on Dean's fingers. The paints beside him fell to the ground as he did, landing on the floor as he did. Cas still scrambled away, inky fingers barely finding purchase on the tile, but finding enough so that he could push himself against the wall, staring up at Dean.

Against his will, he started crying. The dark paint began to dry on his skin, a marker of everything.

There he was, shaking and letting the thing he loved make him feel unworthy as it dripped across his fingertips. There he was, crying and letting the person he'd thought he could trust hurt him.

"Get away from me."

Dean stood before him, hands held out and shaking, guilt bleeding across his body. "Cas, I-"

"I said get away from me." He spit the words from his mouth like everything that coated and poisoned him from the inside, better for Dean to suffer it than him.

And suffer it he did. Dean turned in surrender towards the door, only sparing one more glance at Castiel before walking out.

"I don't know what I did, but I'm so sorry, Cas."

Cas just closed his eyes and let the darkness calm him for once.

FRIDAY

Cas didn't go to school the next day. He didn't want to face the paint that stained the floor nor the boy who had appeared to care for him.

He stayed home with his thoughts.

Dean Winchester, the most accepting and kind person in their entire fucking school thought of him as invalid. Maybe he was.

He let that roll around his head while he scrubbed the sharpie marks off his arm until there was only a faint smudge. It haunted him while he looked at the photo of Dean, the people dense in the background and the words they held above them far too prominent, the person he had his arm slung around and the words he held beside him far too hateful.

He was still staring at it, letting the image boil away the pride he may have dared to have when there was a knocking on the door.

Cas was expecting no one and there was no one he wanted to see, yet he still peeked past the curtains in his living room. Dean Winchester stood on his doorstep, hands wrung in between each other.

Every part of him told Cas to lock the door and walk away, to leave Dean on the stoop and wait for him to leave. And one small part, the part that wanted his Dean back, told him to open the door.

"I talked to Meg," he said when the door opened, obviously not wasting any time on apologies Cas was bound to close the door on. He was right to. Cas looked him over, eyes finally landing on the dark purple rimmed around Dean's right eye.

"Oh, my god."

Dean's lips quirked into a humorless smile. "She didn't want to talk at first."

"Dean, I-" but he bit back the words, apology drying on his tongue and flaking away as if he'd never started it.

"Cas, can I please explain myself?"

At that moment, Cas decided on trusting him. "Yes, Dean." He stepped out onto the mat, toes curling in his socks, and closed the door behind him. He sat down on one of the concrete walls on the side of his porch, Dean taking the other.

Dean didn't look up at him, he kept his gaze on his hands and his voice low. He spoke, words painted with a detail brush dipped in a pure shade of honesty and apology.

"I came out to my dad in the eighth grade and he gave me a shiner, not unlike the one Meg gave me an hour ago." He pointed up at his face but Cas' eyes were already there, welling with bright empathy. He knew the feeling. "He died three months later. Car accident, not the point." He waved it away with a hand. "Anyway, June rolled around and my mom pulls out this three by five flag. It was blue and pink and purple and I cried for four fucking days." Dean looked off somewhere beyond Cas, obviously imagining it in his mind. "And then she drove me to Wichita. Two hours and some because she loves me." A real smile broke out on his face, light spreading across his features at the memory. "It was...awesome. My classmates were there en fucking masse and I made it my goal to take photos with all of them ‘cause it was the coolest thing I'd ever done." Then his expression sobered.

"We were walking and someone called my name and someone else grabbed my arm and before I knew it photos were being taken. I was so giddy, so fucking high on all of it that it took me a while to realize who I was with, whose shoulders I had my arm around, the words they were saying." He looked up at Cas, pleading without words. "You have to believe me when I say that the second I did, I shoved him off me and I told him exactly where he could shove his closed-mindedness." Silent tears fell across his face and Cas wanted nothing more than to hold him. When Dean looked up again, his eyes were brighter than Cas had ever seen them, shining with tears. His breath shook as he spoke, "I tried so hard to figure out who took that photo but it was all such a mess. I _told_ him to delete it, I promise." His voice broke, tight around the last words.

"I thought I was safe when no one posted it by July. I never, ever thought it would come up again. Not like this, not anywhere and not four fucking years later. I never wanted to hurt you, Cas. I never thought those things, it was just awful fucking circumstance. You gotta believe me."

Cas stared down at the blue pen on his arm. Luke's words from that photo written on them.

_Fakes don't belong here._

"I used to be friends with him," Cas said, voice small and quiet. "I told him that I was-I told him in the eighth grade. That's when it started." He looked at the cracks in the pavement under his feet, thumb pulling at the skin where the ink was.

The movement caught Dean's attention. Dean looked from Cas to his arm, guilt and anguish shaking out of his breath. "Cas, no." He stood, stepping until he was standing before Cas and slowly knelt down. His fingers laced with Cas' just resting, not holding, and his other hand came up at his elbow. "Cas, I'm so sorry."

Cas just let his head fall and his eyes close, too tired to keep trying. He could feel Dean rest his forehead on his knees, soft apologies being whispered into the fabric of his jeans, soft circles on his arm.

Eyes closed, Cas took a moment to take it all in, all of the information and the overwhelming emotion. Just thinking about it, he felt white-hot tears track across his cheeks and drip onto his hand where he held Dean's.

The movement of Dean's thumb stopped. His left hand stayed interlaced with Cas' fingers and his right came up to brush the tears away. Cas could almost feel him looking, trying to meet his closed eyes, and when he opened them he was met with green eyes, vibrant with various shades of apology.

"I believe you, Dean."

Dean let out a breath like he'd been holding it for years. Words he'd never said and emotions that'd been simmering under the surface spilled out in the hot air that clung to Cas' skin. "Thank god."

They stayed like that for a long, long while, just resting on one another, basking in the relief. Neither dared interrupt it with words or movement until Castiel spoke:

"We're going to be okay, Dean."

Dean looked up at him, the barest hint of a smile curling at his mouth. "I know, Cas."

It took a while for them to build to where they'd been. Cas avoided GSA on Monday, too nervous that the environment would light Thursday's words differently enough that it might all click into place for Dean. Fear gripped them both the whole day. Dean remained silent, afraid of offering anything that might hurt Cas and so offering nothing at all.

After a night of conflict and sketching the mess of his thoughts, Cas opened up a little. He spoke politely during physics and English, light conversation and assistance passed back and forth, but nothing more carved between.

It was a rough few days during which Castiel found himself stuck balancing between his different desires. He felt trapped, the whole thing too fragile to weigh down with a new coat of paint and too horrifying to look at that he couldn't just leave it alone. His fear paralyzed him into stony silence.

It was exactly a week after, however, that all of Castiel's carefully placed silence crumbled.

WEDNESDAY

Essentially storming into the room, Dean's voice pierced a noticeable hole in Cas' concentration. "Dude, did you see fucking Bela and her boyfriend all hands-on during the first half of lunch today?" Dean dropped his backpack next to Cas who just looked up, stunned.

They'd jumped from physics answers to "dude" in less than twenty-four hours and Cas was confused. It seemed as if Dean had forgotten everything that had happened.

"No? I've spent my lunch in here."

Dean didn't offer any explanation to his change in demeanor, just continued with his story. The colors of his emotions seeped through as he spoke and none of them were tinged with hatred, double meanings or anything like that. He was just…sharing.

"Yeah, they were all...uh…" Dean stuck his tongue out, wiggling it around a little before looking at Castiel. Neither of them could keep it together and Cas could feel everything he'd trapped beneath his stone shell spill out in his laughter.

All Castiel could offer when he managed to control himself was, "Ew."

In all honesty, Castiel had never cared much for the stories that floated around the school, too immersed in figuring out the details of his own world to focus on anyone else's, but the way Dean told it interested him even if the topic really didn't. "Were they really?"

"Yeah! The whole nine yards." He leaned forward, dropping his voice to a whisper, "and two whole bases."

Just as Dean threw his head back with laughter, Castiel recoiled. "Oh, god, Dean, ew!"

Finally sitting, Dean placed a hand over his heart. "I am simply relaying the information about the sucking of the face that went on during our lunch period. Now, I don't really know if the second-floor restroom is the place for that, considering how old it is, but I guess asbestosis isn't the worst thing you could catch in there," he said with a shrug.

The joke went right over Cas' head.

"Herpes, Cas," Dean explained to his blank stare.

"Ew."

Dean side-eyed him. "Wait, what do you mean ‘ew'?"

"I mean ew, that's gross," Cas explained, eyes still averted. He didn't even want to look up from his papers.

"The herpes or the making out?"

"Both." Cas was very much okay with other people expressing affection, he just didn't really want to hear about it.

Dean laughed as he pulled out his notebook. "Okay, hypocrite."

Now Cas was confused.

"How on Earth?" Cas asked, finally looking at his friend.

"You and Meg do it all the time," Dean explained as if his words were obvious.

Cas just looked at him, dumbfounded. "You think Meg and I are an item? Funny, Dean." He returned his focus to his artwork. When he looked back up, Dean's face was flushed.

"Um, Dean? Does physics really ‘get you going' or do you need some water?" Dean just coughed out a half laugh half scoff and shook his head.

"I'm good." His eyes were still wide as he returned his attention to his physics homework. He lasted about three minutes before he turned to Cas again. "You and Meg aren't a thing?"

Cas shook his head. "No, Dean. She is my friend, that's it."

He watched Dean sputter for a few minutes, scrapping ideas and thoughts as he worked around what Cas said. "But you guys, two weeks ago, you were all," he wiggled his fingers, implications flicking off them. He looked down, ashamed of his assumptions.

"No, Dean, we weren't. That was simply a discussion," he said, staying fiercely away from the word ‘disagreement'. "She was comforting me and I was doing the same for her, you simply made assumptions and neither of us made a move to correct you."

Dean's head snapped up. "It wasn't romantic?" And if Cas wasn't mistaking, there was a delicate marbling of colors on his face. Red flushed his cheeks, pale relief blanched over it and embarrassment replaced the envy Cas had spotted in his eyes.

"No, Dean. Why? Do you have some sort of problem with how close I am to my friends?"

"No, not at all. I just, uhm, I don't know." Dean looked around, everywhere but Cas, for an answer. Cas gave him one anyway.

"Assumed?"

Dean cringed. "Yeah."

"My apologies for not correcting you, but if it makes you feel any better, my relationship with Meg is neither romantic nor sexual. In fact, I've never had either kind of relationship with anyone," Cas explained.

Dean just nodded, seeming to still be swallowing the words. "So," he began, eyes still wide, "you're single?"

Cas fell silent. He stared down at the functions on his homework paper, stunned. Confusion from every part of his brain muddled into a pale brown mess. Every thought he had was covered in it, unusable. "I have been for eighteen years, yes."

"Huh." Dean turned away from him then in favor of pulling out his physics book and their take-home quiz from the night before. That was it. No follow up, just a brushstroke and zero detailing.

And then the conversation died off, any dripping remnants wiped clean and dry, leaving Castiel more confused than he'd begun.

THURSDAY

Cas didn't broach the topic of Dean's changed demeanor until English, fearing that seeking Dean out would seem desperate. He would've waited until physics, not wanting to seem abrupt or over-eager, but Dean's attitude remained firmly flippant. It still seemed as if last Thursday hadn't happened when he walked into class.

"Mornin', Cas," he said, dropping the book of poems on his desk and sliding into his seat. All the colors that swirled around Cas' mind, fear, guilt, anxiety, and worry, seemed absent from the palate Dean presented. "How was your Wednesday night?"

Cas spared a glance at the clock. Three minutes until they had to start class. It wasn't enough time, but each passing second chipped away at his calm exterior.

"Awful, Dean."

Regret splashed over everything else he was feeling the second Dean's face fell. Cas watched as he tried to blink his surprise out of his features only to find it mixed with a dark concern that curled around his irises. "Cas, I'm sorry. What happened?"

Deciding to be a small amount more delicate, Cas explained. "I kept thinking about yesterday." He held up a hand before Dean could speak. "We fought last week, Dean. I _yelled_ at you. Why are you just...normal again?"

Dean's eyes found their way to Cas' and then down to his hands, trying to decide on his words. "Look, I just," he looked up at Cas again, apology clear on his face, "I missed you."

Cas nodded, letting the words soak in. Dean _missed him_. "I'm sorry, Dean."

Dean shook his head. "No, Cas, don't apologize. It's okay, I get that you needed a minute, it was a lot of stuff to think about, but you weren't _talking_ to me. I wanted to do something."

"No, I was just worried you didn't want to talk to me because I'm…" he trailed off.

"Cas, stop." Dean reached across their desks for his hand. "I'd never. We talked about this." Cas could feel his thumb rubbing soft circles into the back of his hand.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. I understand, but I want you to trust me."

Then the bell rang and their conversation was over with one last firm ‘I'm here' squeeze to his hand from Dean.

Cas pulled out his English notebook and started looking for connotative words in the poem on the board, but something still tugged at his mind.

Tearing off a piece of notebook paper, he wrote something down and passed it to Dean, silence emboldening him.

_You just started talking to me again because you missed me?_

Dean laughed lightly and looked over at Cas, nodding. Then, he was flipping the paper over and writing a message of his own.

_Well, that, and I needed to talk to someone about the tongue-fucking._

Cas tore off a new piece.

_I'm sorry I wasn't a very receptive audience._

_You're the perfect audience,_ Dean wrote back, a smile catching at the corners of his mouth as he put the words on paper.

_I'm glad you think so, Dean._

The next paper Dean handed over simply had a tiny smiley face on it. Cas pocketed it and pulled off a new strip of notebook paper.

_Your art skills leave something to be desired._

_Sorry. I'm no you._

When Dean slid the paper over to Cas a small wink accompanied it. Cas could feel a deep red crawl up his neck as he moved to write back, but before he could pass it to Dean,

"Dean, Castiel? You are both legally adults. Please don't pass notes in my class." Mr. Shurley stood, unimpressed, at the front of the room, arms crossed over his chest.

In unison, both boys said, "Yes, Mr. Shurley," and returned to their work. Any doubt in Castiel's mind was wiped away as he slipped the smiley face into his sketchbook.

FRIDAY

The next day Dean walked in with a loose sheet of notebook paper in his hands. "I have homework practice for you, Cas." He set it gently in front of him.

Cas looked up at Dean and back down to the problems. No derivatives and no functions, just simple ‘x's and ‘y's. "Dean, this is algebra. I'm not _that_ stupid."

Dean sat next to him, pushing the paper a little closer, not looking at Cas as he did so. "Just solve ‘em," he said quietly. He pulled out his notebook, eyes flicking to Cas every so often as he examined the ten problems in front of him.

"Why?"

Dean paled. "Uh," his now-wide eyes moved from the paper to Cas and back again as if they would give him an answer. "You'll see."

Refocusing on the paper, Cas picked up his pencil, only to have it violently knocked from his hands. There was a firm hand on the paper in front of him. "Not here," Dean said, panic cutting through his words.

Cas laid a hand across Dean's. "Alright, Dean. I'll wait until I'm home."

He watched Dean's chest rise and fall with a heavy breath, nodding along with it. "Okay."

That night, closed in his room because Cas was certain if the contents of this paper were too private for the empty physics classroom, his family was probably the last desired audience, Cas unfolded the ‘homework practice'.

Dean's hasty, nervous lettering could barely be made out where the pencil had smudged, but Cas could still read it.

_x-7=0_

It was very literally middle school math.

_x=7_

Cas scrawled the answer down on a separate piece of paper. One down, nine to go. Excitement shook the pencil in his palm. There had to have been something special about this.

_x^2-9^2=-17_

A little more complicated, but Cas still got it quickly.

_x=8_

Cas looked down at the next one, shocked by the simplicity. Suspicion curled in his mind, but he pushed forward.

_√25= x_

_x=5_

  1. Lawrence, Kansas area code. Quickly, Cas solved the remaining problems. Doubt slipping from his mind as all ten numbers were laid out in front of him. It was a cell phone number. It was _Dean_ 's cell phone number.



The digits stared back at him, almost daring him to do something about them. Instead of listening, Cas folded the paper as many times as he could and slipped it in the back of his sketchbook, promising himself he'd do something about it this weekend.

SATURDAY

It took Cas twelve hours to cave. Carefully, he unfolded the paper and put the numbers into his phone one by one.

_Hi._

There was no response, at least not for a moment, and it had Cas in a state of near-panic. He paced his room, cellphone tight in his palm, wondering with every passing second if he was really that bad at math. Then his phone buzzed.

**Cas?**

Relief bubbled up from somewhere deep inside Castiel, spilling out in laughter.

_Yes._

**Oh, thank god.**

_What?_

**I thought you'd never get it.**

_That's rude._

**Sorry.**

_I'll get over it._

The conversation went a little dead after that, Castiel was unsure of what to say next and Dean was offering nothing. Castiel was about to give up and tuck his phone away, Dean's number still unsaved, when his phone started to vibrate in his hand.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Cas. You figured it out."

Cas rolled his eyes, grateful that the deep flush on his face was hidden from Dean. "Yes. I passed the eighth grade, so it wasn't too difficult," he said, desperate to come off as suave when in reality, he was so nervous he was sweating.

"Cute, Cas."

Somehow made bold by this faceless conversation, Cas said, "Me? Or the comment?"

Dean paused. Whether he was shocked silent, completely put off by Cas' words, or pondering his answer, Castiel didn't know, but when Dean answered, "Both", the brief gap in conversation faded from bright importance to translucent nothing.

"I appreciate it, Dean."

Dean's soft laughter came across the line, not quite as clear as when he was standing in front of Castiel but he still found himself enraptured by the sound. When he fell silent, however, a dense weight settled on their conversation.

Cas was the first to start chipping away at it. "Dean, what's wrong?"

"There's a reason I called."

"Okay," Cas said, prompting a response.

"I just wanted to say ‘thank you' and that I'm really proud of you."

Cas narrowed his eyes at his phone. "Me?"

"Yeah." Cas could hear as Dean shifted where he was. "You told me stuff that was really hard for you. You _trusted_ me. That's awesome. I'm proud of you."

Cas felt colors flood his chest that he'd never experienced before. Colors that inverted the jealousy he'd felt towards Dean the day he met him, that turned the fear and anxiety he'd felt walking into physics that day on their heads. It took a while for Cas to realize that the feeling that coated his heart was pride. 

"Thank you, Dean," he said, too distracted by his epiphany to give anything more.

"Sure thing. And hey," there was more shuffling on Dean's end, "if I wasn't clear the past few days, I don't think you're broken. I accept you one hundred percent."

Cas couldn't help the smile that spread across his face. Dean had made himself perfectly clear, and here he was, saying it again. For Cas. "Thank you, Dean, that means a lot."

Dean cleared his throat and Cas could hear the faint sound of something that sounded like Dean nodding against the phone. "Yeah, well, that's what I needed to say, so if I'm keeping you from something, I'll go. See you on Monday, Cas."

"Wait, Dean." He didn't want Dean to hang up. A phone call was progress, their relationship was no longer sketches limited by school, but fully shadowed portraits, free from judgment. He wasn't going to let this go. "I need help with my calculus homework."

Dean, of course, saw right through him. "Sure, Cas. Crowley got you down again?"

"You have no idea, Dean Winchester," Cas said, pulling out his textbook and the half-sheet with the assignment on it.

"Well, put me on speaker. I'd be happy to help."

MONDAY

"Alright, folks, here's the deal," Dean said in GSA Monday. As he spoke a powerpoint slide came up behind him. _GSA Picnic._ "You can all go, in fact, you should!" And if Cas wasn't mistaking, he looked over at him when he said it. "We're playing games and eating food and it's gonna be great!"

Dean walked around the presentation station and to the front row where a stack of green flyers sat next to Castiel. The bright shade they were brightened in Dean's eyes as he picked them up, joy shining through as he passed the flyers around.

"That's all for now, if you have any ideas for it, e-mail me. Club dismissed, mingle amongst yourselves." He spread his arms wide as if to demonstrate his statement before walking over to take his seat beside Cas. Of course, he gave a nod to the group he normally sat with, an acknowledgment of an old style or creative choice, but his attention was on Cas.

"Will I see you on Saturday, Cas?" he asked, slipping a piece of the bright green cardstock on top of his latest sketch of Dean, hand on his forehead and eyes down in concentration. When Cas didn't set down his pencil, Dean laid his hand on top of the hand Cas was using to hold his sketchbook in place. "C'mon, stopping looking at my pretty face and start looking at my pretty face."

At that, Cas turned, not removing his hand from Dean's. "You are very pretty," he said, humor tearing at the edges of the otherwise romantic comment. "I guess I could free up some space on Saturday. Will your pretty face be there?"

The smile that spread across Dean's face was answer enough.

"Then I guess I will see you Saturday," Cas said, slipping the flyer behind his unfinished calculus work. "In the meantime, could I ask for your help with this?"

TUESDAY

Routine never lasted long for Castiel it seemed. Or, at least, never dull, boring, or, god forbid, _happy_ routines.

He'd been happy, too. Everything seemed to fall into place, anything unneeded falling away and forgotten. He was _good_. But good was never permanent. Not in his experience.

He was in the bathroom, scrubbing the myriad of colors from his skin during break when the door banged open behind him. Instead of heading for a stall, allowing Castiel to leave in peace, footsteps fell hard and heavy and bypassed the rows completely.

Castiel just kept his eyes down willing the dried stripes and splashes to come off a little faster so he could leave. The faucet beside him turned on and the hands that ran uselessly under the water were ones Castiel had become too familiar with.

He kept his focus on the color under his nails, hands shaking with fear that he didn't want. The fear he didn't deserve. He didn't deserve this and yet, here it was.

Luke dried his hands and leaned up against the counter, arms folded across his front. It seemed so casual and the fact that only Castiel seemed to know the opposite was true made him even sicker, and the dark curled tighter in his stomach.

"Hello, Castiel."

Finally, unable to stare at the colors that wouldn't leave, Castiel looked up. He looked into the mirror, the glass giving the feeling that this whole thing could be a dream. He wanted nothing more than for this to be a nightmare, shimmering softly with the shine of a broken reality. But, as Castiel found himself pressed into the edge of the counter, the pain was far too real.

"Not going to answer? I get it."

And if his words hadn't been caught in his throat, trapped by the dark, powdery, charcoal terror lining his insides, he might've laughed. Luke didn't get it. He never would. And maybe if he never got it, he'd never stop.

The thought brought shivers to the tips of Castiel's fingers and as he watched them shake of their own volition, Luke moved closer. Castiel ran out of counter space to escape with.

"Look, Castiel, I don't want to _hurt_ you, I just want to _talk_."

Wasn't that always the case though? Castiel found himself asking to the clouded silence of his own mind. Talking was never just talking, was it? He found his head shaking minutely.

"See, Castiel, you don't have a choice here." There was a hand reaching for his own and no room for Castiel to back into. Luke's fingers snuck between his own, the pressure painful on his knuckles. "I heard that you think you _belong_ somewhere. That you're _okay_." Castiel's hand met the cold tile of the counter and the water collecting there. Pain radiated through his hand at the movement. "That's a lie." Luke's voice rang sharply through the near-empty restroom, echoing not only off the walls but inside Castiel's mind.

There was a long pause. Castiel kept his eyes down again, trained on his feet, shaking in agitation and the fear he hated to be so familiar with.

He could feel Luke's eyes on him, a warm, dark, dangerous heat trying so desperately to melt everything he'd worked to create. And succeeding.

"You don't deserve them. You don't deserve _him_ ," he said, his other hand snaking around Castiel's waist and pulling him close. So close that Castiel could feel every inch of Luke's body pressed against his. Too close.

As much as he didn't want to, as much as parts of him screamed in revolt, the words and suggestions Luke spit in his face wormed their way into his mind. The dark thoughts left a poisonous transfer and Cas started to believe them.

"You are broken and weak, Castiel. You are mine to fix. I can build you back up from the worthless nothing you are. What makes you think _he_ will? What proof do you have that Dean Winchester won't leave you in the dirt, kicking and screaming for the boy who you thought loved you, the second you won't give it up for him?" Luke's hand slipped lower and lower on his hip, trailing sinister accusations across his skin underneath his shirt.

Questions weaved their way through his mind like the leftover trails of the colors he'd washed down the sink.

 _Is he right? What if he is? Am I broken? I'm broken._ Each one another dent to the careful wax creation Luke was slowly melting away.

Cas found himself sinking to the floor, the words in his mind apologies to a boy who would never hear them. _I'm sorry. I'm sorry I'm unworthy. I don't belong._ It was a mantra he couldn't keep up with and one that he couldn't stop. Somewhere in the corner of his mind, the one trying desperately to convince him he was wrong, he heard Luke's footsteps fall away, content with his destruction of what Castiel had called happiness.

He heard the door slam and from there, as the bell to end break rang through the silence of the bathroom, all Cas could hear were the words inside his head, calling him broken.

WEDNESDAY

Cas informed Dean that he was not going to the picnic the following morning. The words left his mouth and he watched Dean's face fall immediately. "You're not going? Why?"

Cas felt something inside him roil, wax boiling and coating his insides with sick colors that burned where they landed. He wanted to spit it out, take everything back, by he couldn't, it was stuck there, and whatever came back up would be melted and hardened. It would be a harsh reminder of what he'd said. Besides, Castiel had spent too much of the previous night tossing words and plans and prayers between his palms to simply throw his words away as if they were another failed draft.

Instead, he spoke again, softer this time. "I'm sorry, Dean, I wish I could."

The reasoning was ambiguous and he knew Dean would ask questions, but with the bell ringing and Castiel taking his seat, there was no room on the canvas of that particular conversation to allow any.

Thankfully, it seemed as if Dean had dropped the issue. They continued as if the class was normal, as if Castiel still clung tightly to his freshly glazed happiness, as if said happiness didn't lay shattered on the floor of the boy's restroom. Castiel felt okay.

As they worked silently on their lab reports, Castiel thought on his options.

Things with Dean couldn't stay as they had been and as they were, that much he knew, but looking over at the boy next to him, he couldn't just drop him. Dean was something special to him. Be it through a mask of kindness and a shiny coat of pity or something else entirely, Dean had been good to him. He would let him down easy. He would pull away slowly, the colors he left fading paler and running dryer until nothing remained. He would be nothing more than a small smear on the paper of Dean's life. Nothing more than a coverable, fixable mistake.

Twenty minutes into class, Castiel couldn't take it anymore. He couldn't stand Dean's soft smiles or his jokes that shouldn't even be funny. He couldn't do it. So, he stood, wrote his name on Ms. Mills' whiteboard in dull, blue marker, and walked out.

Before he could get too far, he heard voices from back in the physics room.

"No, Dean, one at a time."

"Please, Ms. Mills? It's an emergency, like a real one."

There was the telltale sigh of surrender before Ms. Mills' tired voice echoed into the hallway. "Fine. Make it quick."

Finally snapping to enough to understand the implications of her words, Cas started walking again. He'd just reached the door when the sound of Dean's steps was loud behind him. He kept walking. Ducking into the bathroom, and not hearing the door crash against its frame behind him flooded him with dread. That same dread hardened like clay in his veins once he heard Dean's steps across the floor.

Instead of looking up, instead of facing his oversights head-on, he kept his eyes trained on the floor, the piping beneath the sink, his own shoes, anything except Dean.

That same stone dread seemed to vibrate within his veins. Here he was, a marble statue in the middle of the room, carved out by everything Dean had done for him and shattered by everything he couldn't give back. Dean had brought Castiel to life and soon he would realize that he'd made a mistake. His Pygmalion would rescind his prayers to Venus and Castiel would be left cold and frozen once again.

"Cas?"

He looked up, giving in. Dean stood before him, leaned casually against the counter as if nothing was wrong. The expression on his face was a sad expectancy like he wanted Cas to say something, no matter what his words were. Cas remained silent.

"Cas, what's wrong, bud?"

Almost instinctively, Castiel's hand went to his hand, to the pale bruises on his knuckles, and his gaze moved to the countertop Dean was pressed against. Dean's eyes followed before they made eye contact. Dean knew.

He was off the counter in an instant. What were feet was now inches between them as Dean looked between Cas' eyes and the fading purples and blues on the back of his hand.

"Cas, did he…?"

Castiel dropped his gaze. It was an admission without the words. No clean lines or shaded colors, but enough of a rough sketch for Dean to get the picture and for him to do something about it. Before Cas could pull away, he reached forward and separated his hands, just holding them in his own. Looking up, Castiel found an urgency in Dean's eyes he had never expected.

"Cas, if he ever, and I mean ever, hurts you again, you have to tell me."

"Dean, really," he started, quickly moving his gaze to anywhere except Dean. "It's not a big deal."

Dean's grip tightened on his hands like Cas was a brush he was scared to drop. Dean looked at him like he held the prettiest color known to man and if he dropped even a little, if he let Cas go just _that much_ , he'd lose everything.

"Not a big deal? Cas, he's _hurting_ you. I know you don't want me to tell anyone and I won't, I swear, but I want to help."

"Thank you, Dean, that's very sweet, but I know you don't want to waste your time with me, I-" He was cut off by Dean stepping ever closer to him, worried words slipping from his mouth.

"Did he say that?" At Cas' nod, he slipped a hand on his shoulder. "I wouldn't even think that, Cas, it's just not true. I-" Dean's eyes slipped closed and his hands fell to his sides. For a brief moment, his knuckles went white with rage, the color bleeding across his hands until he finally relaxed and focused on Cas again. "I care about you, Cas, and I really fucking hate seeing him get under your skin like this." Sometime while he spoke, Dean's hands found Cas' again. "You're so incredible and to see him tell you that you don't deserve…" Dean trailed off before he could finish, eyes staring at the tiles as his thoughts and realizations were puzzle-pieced together behind them. "Was he the one who convinced you not to come on Saturday?"

Cas didn't answer but instead held a little tighter to where Dean's fingertips still hooked on his.

"Listen to me, whatever he said was wrong. You _do_ belong there and I _want_ you there. C'mon," he said, playfully shaking Cas' finger a little, "I asked you, didn't I?"

"You did," Cas relented, the dark of Luke's words being washed away by Dean's. The black, watery residue remained in his thoughts. It would be a base layer, a part of every one of Castiel's thoughts for the next few days, but, Cas thought, if he had Dean, he might be okay.

A shaky smile cracked across Cas' features and the small action brought a wide grin to Dean's face. "So, then, will I see you on Saturday?"

"Yes, Dean, I think you will."

"Awesome. Now," he began, squeezing Cas' fingertips once more, "you take your time here, if you need it, okay? Come back when you're ready and I'll have all the answers." Dean stepped away then, putting some space between Cas and himself.

"Thank you, Dean."

"‘Course." And before Cas could say anything, he was pressing a soft kiss to his temple.

For a moment, Castiel was caught up in the affection of the gesture before Dean was walking away and the door was bouncing loudly against the frame behind him.

SATURDAY

Cas stood in front of his mirror, fiddling with his shirts and thinking.

It was dangerous, overthinking as he was, but he couldn't help it. Ideas and thoughts fell into his hands and his anxious tendencies molded them into scenarios that left him scared.

His conversations over the past two days bled into one another, Luke's harsh words overtaking Dean's reminders and kindness.

He met his own eyes in the mirror and caught a glimpse of the dread within them.

Dean had kissed him on Wednesday, what else was he going to expect? How much was Castiel going to be able to take before he broke? What would happen when he did? No matter how many times he pushed the questions out of his mind, they came back. No matter how many times he thought their tubes had been emptied, more dark paint spilled out.

When the questions finally became too much, Castiel closed his eyes. He let the colors he'd always wanted to seep across the barren landscapes of his mind. Blues and greens touched and swirled. Yellows and pinks blended into soft oranges as they bled into each other. Whites and blacks clashed and fought but settled to a soft grey, a tolerable middle place that, if only for today, he could handle. Finally, in the peace of this diverse palate he'd created, the gentle words from Wednesday washed across his memory and Cas found the strength to open his eyes. He was met with a blue that held drops of grey confidence and it flowed through him like it was the blood in his veins. This he could do.

Stepping on to the grass of the park was like stepping into a whole other world. The same bright colors from his first lunch in the physics room cropped up in streamers and balloons and spilled out of the bright eyes and happy voices of his classmates. Almost instantly, Castiel knew he'd made the right decision.

It didn't take long for Dean to find him, even in the flurry of people. There was a gentle tapping on his shoulder and sooner than he expected, he was looking into Dean's imperceptibly green eyes.

"Hello, Dean."

Dean's eyes lit up at his words. "Hey, Cas. I'm glad you came."

"Me as well, Dean," Cas found himself saying, and, at the words, Dean's eyes became even greener. As if he were cradling the sunlight in his irises. Cas smiled right back, his own expression no doubt mirroring the enthusiasm of Dean's. Eventually, though, Dean looked away and towards the crowd.

"C'mon, let me introduce you to some people."

From there it was a wild exchange of names and pronouns and interests before there was that light tapping on his shoulder once more.

"Cas, c'mere," Dean said as he grabbed his hand. He led them to a tree on the edge of the picnic. Once they were both sufficiently away from the crowd, Cas watched Dean's demeanor change. His eyes dropped to his feet and he barely held onto the tips of Cas' fingers. It was like he was scared, almost, and the words that came out of his mouth were so soft, Cas barely heard them. "You know I like you, right?"

Cas leaned against the tree, trying with every bone in his body to seem relaxed. Sure, he'd hoped somewhere deep in the part of his mind that liked to daydream sunsets and soft brushstrokes but hearing it sent waves of emotion through his body. Excitement, yes, but terror in its darkest form dripped dark down his spine and had him shivering. There were consequences to those words. "I had some idea."

Dean took his hand. "Well, I do," he looked down, then back up at Cas, "are you okay with that?"

Cas looked back at Dean. "I think I am," he decided.

Dean leaned closer, almost boxing Cas into the tree until he felt the bark biting through his shirt. Something in his chest started to constrict at the proximity, but he ignored it in favor of looking Dean in the eyes, reminding himself that Dean would never hurt him.

Still, there was a dark-tinged fear bleeding into his heart.

Cas took a deep breath and smiled up at Dean. Dean who didn't know the extent of his poor, broken life. He just liked Cas and damn it, Cas liked him too. He wanted this.

Another deep breath and he was better. He could do this.

He could do it when Dean slipped a hand towards his hips. He could do it when Dean's forehead met his own and just held there. He could even handle it when Dean pressed a feather-light kiss to his temple. He was enjoying himself, just being around Dean, and knowing he was there. New confidence flooded through his body.

Then Dean took his hand.

Dean laced his fingers with Cas' and held tight. It was a simple mistake made by the swift movement of the moment, but it was all it took. Cas started to shake. His hand was pressed into the bark, immovable, and Cas could feel his brain stop working. Despite being outside, he felt as if he was trapped, the world closing in on him. His lungs didn't want to work, taking in air that felt thin and like cotton simultaneously and breathing it out almost instantly. Tears he hadn't even expected fell from his eyes. His legs caved underneath him and his hands shook. His body wouldn't listen to him, his limbs weren't working and he just sat there, palms in the dirt, trying to back himself as far into the tree as he could.

It all felt too familiar.

What felt like hours later, his eyes focused on Dean who knelt next to him, fear and guilt scrawled across the harsh lines on his face. He had his hands out as if he was trying to catch him, steady him and yet he didn't reach out to touch Cas. Never laid his hands on him. Didn't dare touch fresh pottery, directly out of a kiln. Wouldn't risk cracking or breaking when had already been burning for eternity. Cas was grateful beyond words.

When he calmed down enough to stop choking on his own breaths, Dean visibly relaxed. "Are you better?" Not okay, but better.

Cas nodded just enough to get his point across.

"Do you want to stand up?"

Another small nod, but this time, Cas held up a hand. He didn't trust his own legs.

Dean offered his elbow instead of his hand. Taking it, Cas stood and steadied himself on Dean's shoulders.

"Thank you," he whispered, voice still rough and weak from before. He laid a hand across Dean's chest and led them, Cas still supported by Dean's frame, away from the tree.

With enough space to breathe, Cas wrapped his arms around Dean in a very real hug.

"Thank you," he said, again.

Dean didn't speak, just hugged Cas a little more sure. As they stood there, Cas took in the things around him, the fabric of Dean's flannel held tight under his fingers, the tears he could feel drying on his face, a hand rubbing gentle circles on his back. He felt almost at peace like he could overcome these _problems_ he had, with Dean's help.

Except, he realized, Dean didn't know the half of it. What if it was simply guilt that brought out this side of Dean? Dean had assured him that he wasn't aphobic, but that could easily change with a partner.

The questions drew lines and scrawling marks across his mind, creating falsehoods that felt real, every angle and color perfect. A perfect forgery with only a small detail wrong. With each image plastered across his mind and overlapping and clashing with one another, Cas couldn't tell what was real. He felt himself begin to panic again.

Pushing himself out of the warm embrace, Cas walked, didn't run, away from Dean. The wind bit through his shirt and despite the cold, he didn't stop until the parking lot of the park they were in. Slumping down on the curb, he just sat and waited for someone to come and collect the shattered pieces of him that he'd been dropping everywhere.

In his peripherals, he saw Dean's boots line up to his own feet on the cement. "Cas, what's wrong?"

"I'm sorry."

"Yeah," Dean paused to sit down next to him, "what do you have to be sorry for?"

Cas flipped his hands from where they sat on his lap, pressing a thumb into his wrist so hard he could see his fingers move from the dangerous pressure on his tendons. "Nobody," he coughed through his words, "nobody..." He couldn't finish.

Dean shifted toward him, resting a light hand on his back. With the other, he gently pulled Cas' right hand from the harsh grip of his left. "Nobody what?" he prompted. His voice was quiet, straining with the concern he was holding back.

Cas just clenched his fists against the pain of it. Closed his eyes to look away from the parts of himself he didn't want to see, to reveal. He was shattered around himself and the pieces lay there, evidence to how broken he was. He couldn't look, couldn't admit to it, because uncovering what was broken meant breaking even more.

But he had to tell him. No point in delaying what would happen anyways. Cas took a steeling breath. "Nobody, no matter how ‘caring' they are, nobody wants a broken boyfriend."

Dean's hands moved across his arms, thumbing across the fissures and his broken pieces. Each soft touch pulling him back into the moment and away from the ceramic pieces on the sidewalk that shattered under his feet.

"Cas," he said, pulling him close until he could rest on Dean's shoulder, back to the rest of the world. "Cas, you aren't broken."

Instead of an answer, Cas just sobbed, a broken sound to match the rest of him. It only prompted Dean to hold him a little tighter, cradling what was left.

"You're fine, Cas, you aren't broken," Dean whispered, the comforting words a juxtaposition to what he was used to. He still shied away and Dean let him, but his arms remained a comforting presence around him.

"You're normal, Cas."

Cas shook his head against Dean's shoulder, unsure of Dean's words and untrusting of his own.

"We talked about this, Cas. There's nothing wrong with you."

At his unyielding insistence, Cas finally looked up, eyes red with tears. "Dean, stop," he said, almost begging. He rubbed a hand at his eye, the pressure pushing the color across his face. "You can't keep saying things like that. Things you don't know."

One of Dean's hands slipped from his back to gently wipe any evidence of distress from Cas' face. "I know what I'm talking about."

Cas would have laughed had Dean's face not been etched with the sketch marks of sincerity, had the evidence of emotion not been present in his mostly schooled expression.

"Why?" was all he could ask. "Why me?"

"Because, Cas," Dean said, "I like you-I like _everything_ about you. And I want to be your boyfriend, if that's what you want."

He just looked down at his wrist, where he'd rubbed off the small marker of his pride leaving only a black stain.

"It's what I want, but I don't know if I deserve it, Dean. I can't give you what you want." He shook his head slowly and kept his head down. His eyes were rimmed red with shame and he couldn't let Dean see that, he had to let him have this _delusion_ of devotion for just a second longer before the boy next to him came to his senses and dropped his hand like cold, grey clay.

But Dean never did, he kept Cas's hand softly held in his and kept his eyes searching.

"What makes you think I want that, Cas?"

"Because you're only human, Dean! I'm just-" _Shattered. Broken. Hopeless._

"Worthless?" a third voice offered, sending a cold, dark color shivering down Cas' spine and spreading through his body, staining all it touched as it crawled up and across his paper-weak frame.

Then the hand was gone from his and out of the corner of his eye, he could see Dean's boots displacing the pebbles that had been so still, so constant through this whole moment. And now they, and Dean, were gone, just a few feet out of reach.

"Get out of here," he heard Dean say, voice dripping with a poison ink Cas wished would never drip on him.

Luke scoffed, dry and dead, emotionless. "You're playing with my toy, Winchester. I'm coming to get what's mine."

Another step of Dean's boots across the concrete, one dangerous step closer to Luke. "He doesn't need _fixing_."

"Please," Luke said, taking his own step closer to Dean. Cas couldn't look up until Luke said, "You wouldn't know. You weren't there when he _broke_."

And for the second time, Cas summoned the strength to explode.

"Stop."

His voice felt cold, foreign, even to himself. It spit out the glass shards he'd swallowed so long ago.

Dean turned back and the shock he saw in his face spilled out of Cas' heart. Luke, on the other hand, turned to him, furious.

"What?" he asked, almost stalking past Dean to tower above Castiel.

Cas closed his eyes, one more look at a darkness _he_ designed before he felt drowned by someone else's. "I said, stop." His palms pressed into the ground and he stood. "Just fucking stop, Luke."

He felt green eyes on him from the left and Luke's on him from the front, both utterly astounded.

"What makes you think you can say that? You're just a stupid, broken loser."

Cas raised his eyes to meet Luke's. "Maybe." He took a breath, the air filled with a kind of clarity he hadn't felt in a long while. "Maybe I am deserving of everything, Luke. Maybe I need it, I'm not sure. But he's not," he said, hand pointing at Dean. "He doesn't deserve that."

Luke's eyes narrowed on Castiel.

"So, please," Castiel continued, invigorated by something deep inside him, "fuck off."

Before he could even register his own words, his hands were back on the cement, the stone cutting into his palms where they'd hit the ground. One last jab, the scratches from the hard shove a little more permanent than a thumbprint and some whispered words.

It hurt. Except, Castiel couldn't bring himself to care about the pain. He only cared about the figure looming over him, a shadow that blanketed him. It was dark red with anger, a shade not dissimilar to the blood slipping from Castiel's palms.

Kneeling close to him, Luke brought a hand to his chin. Castiel stayed firm, not bending to his whim, not allowing himself to snap.

"Don't."

Luke just laughed, spitting the last of his dark ink on Castiel's face. "And why shouldn't I?"

"Because he said so," Dean said from behind them.

Standing, Luke looked over at the other boy, recycling his same, weak words from earlier, "What're you gonna do, Winchester?"

Calm as ever, Dean simply said, "I could break your jaw, for one." He paused, deciding on his words. "I won't, though. I'll do you one better. I'll break every bone in your body if you lay a hand on him again."

His eyes had lost all the bright green, consumed by the wild dark shade Cas himself managed to fear a little.

"Leave, Luke. Now."

He looked far less intimidating staring up at Dean as he was but even so, Luke looked at Castiel one more time. A hard stare, a threat, but not one Castiel put any weight to. Eventually, he walked away, insults dripping off his tongue.

Both boys watched him leave, but only Cas felt stones fall from his shoulders like paperweights kicked away.

"I could have done that," he said, dusting the gravel from his palms.

Dean, seeing that Cas really was okay, let himself laugh. The sound overtook the darkness that had been resting in both of them, bringing much-needed light to the moment.

Offering a hand to pull him up, Dean said, "And that's why chivalry is dying, Cas."

"Sorry."

"Don't be," he said, shaking his head, the simple movement sweeping away all the remaining inky residue. "Well, actually, do."

Cas looked up from where their hands met. "Why?"

"You called yourself deserving of that, Cas. You said you _needed_ it-everything he did to you." Dean cast a glance behind him, to Luke's retreating form. " _He's_ the sick one. You aren't, I promise. I don't know how many times I have to remind you, but it's true."

"Okay, Dean," Cas promised, for once feeling like he could keep it.

A small smile crept across Dean's face at the sincerity of Cas' words. "Good. Now," he said, clapping his hands together in front of him, "let's go, sweetheart, we've got a picnic to see." Dean held out his hand, a silent offer in his eyes. Accepting, Castiel took his hand, already walking back into the crowd of people far stronger than he had been moments ago.

Despite everything, Cas didn't talk to Dean that weekend, once again too gripped by fear. Fear of Luke, fear of Dean, not even he knew. It all smudged together, colors bleeding across where they'd been carefully lined out. It was all supposed to be separate and now it wasn't.

His careful canvas had dried into a mess and the colors he'd had before wouldn't help.

Except, he realized, laying on his bed, finally retouching the spade, he didn't need to use those colors. All the words from the weekend provided him with shades he'd yet to experiment with. He'd been too afraid. He'd never been offered. He'd never found them. He had those now. He just needed to figure out how to use them.

But he'd find a way. Castiel was an artist, after all.

MONDAY

He was in the middle of blending highlights into blue-tinted water droplets when Meg tapped him on the shoulder. Initially, he ignored her in favor of the window that covered the expanse of his paper, but when the tapping became insistent, almost rhythmic, he looked up.

"Yes, Meg?"

She moved her pencil across the back of his hand where it lay on the table. The movement was calming and soft, another reminder that the people in his life were not all bad.

"I'd love to know what your lunch plans are today because Ruby offered to buy me coffee in exchange for doing basically our whole project, and I'd love to take her up on the offer," she said, her eraser bouncing across his knuckles to the beat of his heart.

He knew what she was implying, what she was really asking underneath her words, but he didn't want to admit his answer. No matter how sure he was about his choices, and sure he was, he would always have that doubt snaking black around the back of his mind.

"I don't have any plans, Meg, no."

The tapping on his hand ceased and before he could explain or make more excuses, the rubber was on his nose, tapping there to get him to turn to her. When he did, he was met with Meg's less than impressed expression.

"Don't lie to me, Clarence. You can't."

She was right and Cas knew it. So, instead of answering her, spitting out the truth, writhing and vulnerable on the table before him, he turned back to his water drops, buffing dimension into the colors.

"Cas." Her tone left no room for ignoring. He turned to her and faced the expectation that curled under her words. "Are you going to GSA."

For some reason, he caved. Maybe it was because he couldn't hide from Meg, maybe it was because he wanted to tell someone and maybe it was because he was finally allowing himself enough personal freedom to admit such a thing. Any of those reasons, it didn't matter. All that mattered was the fact that Castiel looked Meg in the eyes and said, "Yes."

Even three or so hours later, he still held firm. He was going.

Cas walked into the physics room right as lunch started and for the first time that year, he was the first one in the club besides Dean and his co-leader. Dean seemed, somehow, to recognize that Cas needed space and kept to his conversation. Cas picked a seat in the back of the classroom once again. When people started filing in, Dean set up his powerpoint. It was untitled and the first slide was black.

"Hey, folks! We're doing something a little less than planned because this is my club and I do what I want as long as it fits under school rules!" He directed the last part to Ms. Mills who barely even glanced up from her work. Turning back to the board, Dean said, "Today we're talking about," he flipped the slide and Cas choked on his own breath, "asexual representation!" He did little jazz hands at the front of the room but when he caught Cas' eyes his expression sobered.

Castiel could only imagine the shocked expression diluting his features, but he still kept his eyes locked on Dean's.

The green he'd grown to love was now rimmed with an intensity, a point that Dean was trying to get across and Castiel understood it. He knew that behind the fearful determination in Dean's eyes was a soft tenderness just _waiting_ to come through.

Cas decided he would let it.

Eyes still on Dean, he whispered a soft, "Thank you," to no one but himself, but he knew Dean saw by the way his shoulders relaxed and his focus finally shifted to the rest of the room.

"Get out your pencils, folks, it's time to add to your reading lists," Dean said, before giving Cas one last smile and continuing his presentation.

Thirty minutes later the first lunch bell rang and people filed out. Cas stood, ever so slowly, and moved behind their desk. He didn't sit down, still staring at the board and blinking to prevent any _actual_ tears from forming. He didn't dare stain this moment.

At the front of the room, Dean closed out the powerpoint and walked over to their desk. He kept his eyes on Cas, dragging his hand along the other surfaces he passed before slowly pulling his backpack alongside his desk and just standing there. "Hi."

Cas moved past the tucked in chairs and wrapped his arms around Dean who immediately responded in kind, pulling Cas into a crushing hug. Cas buried his face into Dean's shoulder and whispered a small, "thank you".

Dean pulled away only slightly to look Cas in the eyes. "As our school's GSA leader it is my job to make sure everyone feels welcome and included," he paused and let a little smile turn up the corners of his mouth, "including my stupidly adorable boyfriend."

Cas felt something warm crawl across his skin at the word and only clung tighter to the fabric of Dean's sweatshirt, letting his thanks seep from the tips of his fingers and letting the warmth of Dean's arms drip colors across his body he'd been longing to feel for almost four years.

It shimmered blue with freedom, dripped yellow with pure elation, shone purple with something like devotion, and it rippled with a thousand other colors that Cas never wanted to stop basking in, but when he finally looked up, he was met with a green that he decided he no longer needed to paint. Just so long as he could keep looking at the real thing forever.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, kudos are my lifeblood, comments make my happy hormones go, and I love you all!
> 
> I'm [violetdean](violetdean.tumblr.com) on tumblr, let me know what you think or ask me a question! I'm there a lot.


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